


Redemption Song

by RhetoricFemme



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Eating Disorders, Family Drama, Late 20s / Early 30s, M/M, Religion, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24957100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhetoricFemme/pseuds/RhetoricFemme
Summary: His saving grace comes with the grit and crunch of gravel beneath his tires. The sound becomes increasingly familiar with each passing day. The gentle lull of the car when Marco turns the wheel to accommodate the slight curve of their winding driveway is an oddly satisfying movement.Regardless of whatever comes up in the day-to-day, Marco takes heart in knowing he’s helped create somewhere worth coming home to.
Relationships: Marco Bott/Jean Kirstein
Comments: 18
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note this chapter has mentions of self-harm (cutting), depression, and a brief mention of past suicidal ideation.

Despite being in her forties, Marco Bodt’s psychiatrist keeps an office that looks as though she simply transferred over the contents of her undergraduate dorm room.

There’s a signed vintage poster of Pat Benatar on the wall. Right beside it is a bulletin board littered with post-it notes and personal photographs. A print-out calendar Marco swears must have bled onto the corkboard behind it for all the appointments scribbled onto it.

It’s cozy, honestly. Especially when the century-old radiator and throw blankets on the backs of the chairs are given proper consideration. There’s also an electric kettle, and the top right drawer of the desk houses a wooden tea box with a glass lid, storing at least three different brands of Earl Grey inside of it.

The pier right outside the window is a more than suitable compliment for the office. At the end of it is a lighthouse that Marco is rather fond of. There’s a delightful irony in the way it resembles one of those mass-produced motivational posters, right up to the moment a wave crashes violently over top of it. That’s life, Marco thinks.

But looks can be deceiving. For all the laid back niceties a person will find within Petra Ral’s office, the real reason Marco has come back is the way she’ll give him those hard truths about life and himself. Of the several therapists he’s seen in his life, Petra had been the one Marco had stayed with the longest. The one he’d occasionally reached out to, at her behest, seemingly out of nowhere when all other avenues failed to do right by him.

It’s been some time, but Marco and Petra have been with one another long enough that he’s considering asking her for a cup of whatever tea she’s currently drinking.

Due to the nature of his visit, however, Marco decides against it.

“Well. I can’t say that isn’t an honest answer.” Petra drawls, an owlish expression trained right on Marco’s face. 

She’s just old enough for Marco to imagine she might be an older sister. The kind that can go from sassy to sage when the moment calls for it. How nice that she also doesn’t put up with his shit and is able to write his prescriptions.

“See. You get me.” Marco smirks handsomely. “I’m a lucky man.”

“Five nights ago I got a call after you sliced your side bad enough to end up in the ER, and you tell me you’re feeling _nostalgic._ ” Petra says levelly. “That’s your freebie, Marco. We both know you’re cute. But what I want to hear is how you’ve been coping since then, and how you’re feeling today.”

Marco nods to indicate he’s listening, even if he’s only met her eyes twice in the last half hour. His entire day is spent looking people in the eye, telling them where to invest their money. Advising the best ways to see financial gain and long-term growth, and crossing his fingers they don’t assume his expertise is going to offer them a roadmap to a better, happier life.

Some of Marco’s clients are better at taking advice than others. While some of them have no issue in heeding his guidance, there are some who Marco feels as though he’s just removed a book of matches from a child’s hand, only for the child to snatch them right back again.

Either way, Marco spends his days looking those clients in the eye and not lying to them. It’s exhausting, to say the least, but it’s also the only way to ensure he falls asleep each night.

Almost a week ago, one of those clients had asked Marco how he handled his own long-term investments. Asked what it was he was putting away for, where he’d hoped to be in another thirty or forty years.

It’d been a wake-up call. A sort of backward epiphany wherein Marco had realized himself to be a thirty-two year old man whose affairs were basic on purpose. Simple and tidy; nearly all his assets liquid and designated either to his own meager needs, or to the care of his grandfather.

Marco had no will, but in that moment had imagined that in the event his grandfather were gone, he’d want his best friend to have whatever earthly goods Marco had to offer. Reiner was not only worth leaving it to, but it’d keep anything of value away from people who Marco deemed unworthy of having it. He’d made a mental note to get to work on that.

Marco had gotten introspective that night, dwelling on his client’s question and ruminating over the fact that hours later he still didn’t have much of an answer. It was his job to help provide others with that type of resolution, and the fact he couldn’t do that for himself spoke volumes.

What was Marco putting away for, indeed. 

That contemplation had burrowed deep, opening up old feelings that had festered inside and never really went away. At this point, Marco has been living with depression for close to two decades, and for quite a few years he’s been handling it rather well.

It was one thing to deal with a disposition that left Marco feeling as if he were frequently cutting through dead brush, just to see to the end of the day. It was another thing entirely to be left feeling as though he’d been pinned beneath a sickening miasma from which there was no escape, as he had on that particular day.

“Sorry, Petra.” Marco musters up a half-smile. An authentic one. “I went so long without coming in, and being here now feels like I’m just using you.”

“I’m your doctor, Marco. You’re meant to use me.” Petra watches Marco eyeing the clock. When they’d first met ten years ago, she was working as a psychotherapist. She’d watched Marco, who was perpetually kind and typically earnest, slide between the good times and bad. Seen him summit great heights, only to spelunk back into the mire.

At least on the surface, he never seemed to stay down for very long. The truth, Petra had once suggested to Marco, was that he felt as if he couldn’t afford to. Marco couldn’t find a reason to disagree.

In all, Petra had worked with Marco for four years before their paths had begun to curve in varying directions.

Marco had started to pick up momentum in his own field around the time Petra had been invited to join a larger practice across the Maine-Quebec border. She’d left Marco with referrals of trusted colleagues before taking leave and trying her hand at the city, earning her doctorate and becoming a psychiatrist along the way.

Marco was one of only a select few patients for whom Petra offered to be either therapist or psychiatrist, or both. She had made certain to invite Marco to give her a call if he ever felt the need to.

Now, Petra glances at the clock with him, situated in a refurbished second floor bedroom of an old Queen Anne that houses her private practice. Finally, she tells him to knock it off. “You’re the last one, Marco. We’re not counting minutes today.”

Marco eyes her uncomfortably. He’s never been one to take something he can’t return, and can think of no reasonable way to repay this kindness.

But when Petra gives him that look, the same warmth that draped heirloom quilts over her chairs shines through. “The last time I saw you, your short-term goals were to become a CFA, and long-term was staying somewhere long enough to become a partner within a firm. Has any of that changed?”

“I passed all the exams a few years back, and have a waiting list of folks who want to work with me. So that worked out alright.”

“Nice.” Petra nods in approval. “What else? What about becoming a partner?”

“I mean. I recently bought a house with a buddy, so if you’re asking if I’m putting down roots and plan on sticking around, that’s the long and short of it.” Marco speaks with a loaded inflection, which she immediately recognizes as having more to it than Marco is likely willing to share.

“Care to elaborate on that?”

Marco looks at the clock again. If he were a betting man, he’d guess that Petra removes it before their next appointment. “Not today?”

She raises a brow at him. “Are you counting your minutes or mine?”

Marco sighs, concedes as his mouth twists into something not quite a grin. “I’m not having suicidal ideation, Petra. But thank you for asking.”  
  
“I didn’t.” She points out. “First I wanted to see if you would offer me anything.”

“We’re starting a garden.” Marco tells her, deflecting his gaze toward his steepled fingertips. “Bought a fixer-upper near the coast. It’s hilariously out of date, but it’s sturdy. Came with a lot of land.”

“When you say we, is that you and a significant other?”

“It’s Reiner.”

Years may have gone by, but Petra’s eyes light up with recognition at the name. “Your frat buddy!”

Marco chuckles at that. Their relationship may have started out as such, but through the years he and Reiner had found kinship and accountability in one another. The fact that romance never had anything to do with it had been a breath of fresh air.

“Yeah, my frat buddy.” Marco grins. “I promoted him to casual buddy, then to actual friend, so on so forth. But whatever. _Best friend_ isn’t a person, it’s a tier.”

Petra extends a finger at him accusingly. “You stole that line from The Mindy Project.”

“Reiner made me watch it.” Marco deadpans. With that, he exhales loudly and stands. Takes one last look at the clock as a mental note to check if it’s still around for his next visit.

Petra sees Marco to the front door, despite his insistence otherwise. She just gives him that authentically sweet smile, hands him a prescription and reminds him of the homework she’s assigned him for the following week.

“Hey.” Marco turns around to face her. They’re on opposite sides of the threshold now, and Petra’s demeanor quickly rallies back into professional mode as the words take their time forming in Marco’s throat. “This isn’t the same as my early twenties.”

“No?”

“No.” He squares his shoulders, finally succeeds in giving his full eye contact. “It’s been hard lately? And I don’t want the same things as I did back then. I changed, then goals changed… I’ve sorta been floating around anymore. And I _hate_ that. But I’m glad to be here.”

The wind has picked up, obscuring Petra’s eyes from view. But she gives a firm nod, and Marco knows he’s been heard. “That’s good, Marco. It’s great. And I want to hear more about it next week.”

It’s not perfect. But at least he no longer feels as though he’s lying at the bottom of a well, staring up while the rest of the world passes by. There’s a pressing sense of conviction buried not all that deep inside of him, and if nothing else Marco knows he’s got what it takes to claw his way back up again.

It takes a solid half hour of sitting in his car, watching the sun set beneath the pier and contemplating life before Marco’s ready to make the trek back home. At some point he finally remembers to turn the heat on, but even then he takes his time starting to drive.

They’ve only been in the new house for about a month now, having been given the keys just after Christmas. New England winter or not, they had rented the largest dumpster available and immediately set about gutting the place to start anew.

Throughout January and February wood had been sanded and walls stripped or knocked out. Nearly every moment not spent at work had been put into basic restoration on the house.

By March, enough work had been done that it had become comfortable enough to crash at the new place, as opposed to retreating to the comfort of their apartment. It’s a new kind of solace when Marco reminds himself of the ornate fireplace waiting for him inside the old Georgian farmhouse they’ve been pouring so much of themselves into.

Marco sighs, scrubs his hands through his hair. The movement pulls at the stitches sewn into his waist, and just like that he’s hit with the realization of what he’s really trying to do here.

From allowing Reiner to take him to the hospital, to phoning Petra after a lengthy period of silence, there was no feasible way for Marco to continue hiding from himself. In both instances, Marco had acted before overthinking, knowing that the moment he was discharged from the emergency room, there would be no escaping either Reiner or Petra’s demand for accountability.

Surprising even himself, Marco welcomes it.

He’s learning that he’s allowed to be taken care of, in addition to being the person tending to others. Figuring out that he has merit beyond what he has to offer the people he cares about, and that he does not owe any amount of debt for simply existing.

Shaking almost uncontrollably, Marco’s fingers bypass the inside of his coat, coming to rest gingerly atop the sensitive gash in his side. This had been a mistake. A dare unto himself, and a momentary lapse of reason so very unlike those injuries from years ago.

With this in mind he makes a promise to himself that it can’t happen again.

From the curbside in front of Petra’s practice, all the way back to the house, Marco knew he’d have accountability. It’s an awkward, tense sort of comfort, but he’ll take it.

He uses the half hour drive through their charmingly time-worn Maine town and its rural roads to decompress, to figure out how to commandeer the next twenty-four hours of his life.

Unstable moments and turning points aside, this is no typical weekend, as they’ll be hosting their first guest in the new home. 

Jean Kirschstein, first introduced to him as Reiner’s cousin, had come into Marco’s life two years ago. Reiner had nominated Jean as the new healer in their World of Warcraft guild. Their group had shown no resistance to Reiner’s inquiry, who had mentioned his cousin was not only a workaholic in need of a break, but that he’d prove an asset to the group.

And the group had loved him. True to Reiner’s word, Jean’s character and style of playing had gained countenance with the entire guild. Some of them would even begin to run side quests or map out raids with him. Sasha, their hunter, had even worked over zoom with Jean to build their own campaign.

Marco had taken to Jean immediately. Sardonic and astute, there was a contemplative lilt to Jean’s speaking voice that Marco had become increasingly preoccupied with. Over time, their rapport had evolved from countless hours of gametime and private chats, to middle-of-the-night text messages and lengthy phone conversations. Marco had long since come to count Jean as a dear friend. Unbeknownst to anyone else, Jean had become his _dearest_ friend.

As eager as Marco is to finally be seeing Jean in person, he finds himself thankful to be coming home to one more quiet, ordinary night. 

It’s shocking, Marco thinks, just how much energy is sapped out of a man when he falls into one of those game-changing revelations. To say nothing of the business he’d combed over with Petra that afternoon, Marco’s drive home seemed to come with one unasked for epiphany after another.

His saving grace comes with the grit and crunch of gravel beneath his tires. The sound becomes increasingly familiar with each passing day. The gentle lull of the car when Marco turns the wheel to accommodate the slight curve of their winding driveway is an oddly satisfying movement.

The air smells of ocean salt and the life-affirming scent of spring thaw, and Marco cannot help but smile when he looks up at the old farmhouse. The downstairs lights are all off, save for the glow of the kitchen in the back. The living room windows are dark, though he can see the soft flicker of a fire he knows Reiner has likely kindled just for him.

Regardless of whatever comes up in the day-to-day, Marco takes heart in knowing he’s helped create somewhere worth coming home to. A place he can bring his grandfather. Somewhere he can grow into, and retreat when the only thing he’s left wanting is to escape from the rest of the world.

He thinks of that now while gripping the handle of the car door, his only division between the bite of an early spring evening, and the warmth that awaits inside.

It only feels late, when in truth the night has just begun. Knowing this does little to negate how Marco is feeling, and he finds himself considering the merits of going to bed at six-thirty in the evening.

He’s got no reason not to. Jean won’t be arriving until the following afternoon, and his list of tasks is small. Mostly perfunctory, and some existing entirely to humor Marco’s own neuroses. He wants everything to be perfect for Jean, while being simultaneously aware that even as they are, things are just fine. Perhaps the most annoying thing is that less than twenty-four hours out, Marco still hasn’t been able to convince Reiner they should go grocery shopping. 

At any rate. As with everything else, he’s going to have to take this one moment at a time. Best not to worry or get ahead of himself, he decides.

Opening the car door, Marco has finally decided on heading straight to bed. It feels as if for the best.

He’ll start anew as a fresher, more personable version of himself in the morning.

  
  


**Last Month**

If nothing else in this life, Marco is a creature of habit. He works hard without a second thought, and tends to celebrate his victories quietly. They are, after all, simply rungs added onto a ladder of his own design. Priding himself on knowing the right time to take the occasional risk, Marco’s success is largely due to knowing when to be patient and stay the course.

That sentiment applies to life outside of work, too. All it takes is a little process of elimination to figure out the best ways to lift one’s spirits. Whose company to keep or dismiss. What endeavors are worth his free time, and various other means of keeping morale afloat. And Marco is a big believer in sticking with what works.

He’s deep into his new favorite diversion before recognizing it’s become a thing. It’s the end of a rather arduous day, one of those times when the body takes to autopilot the first chance it gets. Before Marco knows it, he’s buckling his seatbelt, Jean’s name is highlighted on his phone screen and his thumb is already poised to hit _send_. 

Marco isn’t sure how he’d gotten here, though he can’t claim to be surprised. His call history and myriad text messages are all he needs to realize that he looks for Jean whenever moments of duress appear.

The whole thing had started on a completely ordinary, sleepless night wherein Marco had retreated into game. Unbeknownst to Marco at the time, Jean had taken to an alternate character to troll him from one fantastical continent to another.

Their friendship had been brand new at the time, though it hadn’t prevented Jean from causing Marco to laugh. Nor did it keep Marco from preferring Jean’s company, whereas he’d started that night desperately wanting to disassociate and play alone.

It’d been the start of a new habit. One where Marco occasionally tries his luck on those tiresome nights, and seeks out a word or two from Jean. That’s not to say Marco gets him every time. But it’s enough to know he can always count on Jean getting back in touch when it’s time. It’s yet another kind of bliss that at some point, Jean had begun reaching out for Marco of his own accord.

And so it’s par the course when the two of them end up on a Facetime call, mere weeks before Jean is meant to visit.

“It finally happened.”

Jean glances at his tablet screen, one curious brow drawing upward. “You stood on that one guy’s desk and told him what you really think of him?”

“No.” Marco’s voice lilts. “No, Freudenberg wasn’t stupid today.”

“Then what?”

“Someone came in asking for my help with estate planning.” Marco draws it out, watching the curiosity build on Jean’s face. “And she’s super old.”  
  
“Are you gonna hook her up with your grandpa?”  
  
Marco ignores this question, keeps going. “And she’s got a certain amount of wealth.”

“Yes?”

“And by a certain amount, I mean lots. And she started telling me all about how she’s gonna die soon, and she’s in a rush to get this stuff taken care of, and that’s when she tells me she’s--”  
  
“--that she wants to hook up with _you_.”

“She wants to leave it all to her dog!” Marco shouts into the screen, covering his face out of sheer exhaustion. “Not only that--she didn’t appreciate my opinion when I suggested she consider another course of action.”

“Well.” Jean shrugs. “Did she ask for your opinion?”

Marco just looks at him. Takes in that knowing little smirk, fingers aching that he can’t reach out and pinch Jean’s cheek in retaliation. “Typically speaking, that’s what people come to me for. Financial advice. Because I’m a financial advisor.”

“Mm. Gramma sounds like the sort who’s loaded and wants you to affirm her poor life choices.”

“Uh huh.”

“What kind of dog is it?”

“Jean.”

“So did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you help Grannie Warbucks leave her fortune to her dog?”

“Not yet. I told her I’d have to get back to her.” Marco groans, scrubs his hands down his face.

“ _Hey._ What’s up, Marco?” Jean’s nonchalant teasing segues into something more sympathetic now. He leans forward, imploring the camera with openness and concern, as Marco’s voice is saturated with more fatigue than one annoying client could possibly merit.

“Nothing.” Marco sighs. “I’m just tired.”

“Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“Well then,” Marco snaps, the words lashing out of his mouth like the crack of a whip.“How about you get with one of your saints and see if they can locate my sanity?”

Shit.

On the other side of the screen, Jean is wide-eyed and incredulous. Not once in two years has he been on the receiving end of a mood like this. He watches as Marco freezes on the spot, cursing for having caught himself in a less than savory moment.

But Marco’s apology falls on deaf ears. Jean is too busy laughing with the entirety of his being, knows as well as anything that there had been no ill intention behind the outburst. There’s little for Marco to do at this point, except take in the blissful scene playing out in front of him. Cracks a smile despite himself, apologizes again for good measure.

“You’re such a grump!” Jean accuses between fits of mirth. “Holy shit, Marco.”

“Yep.”

“You’re good.” Jean promises, clamping his lips together in an attempt to sober himself up again. “It’s Saint Anthony you want, by the way. I can add your sanity to my list of requests. Right to the top.”

Marco looks up at that, his mind a bit clearer for Jean’s change of tone. “What’d you lose?”

“I don’t know.” Jean sighs. “Probably nothing at all.”

“That’s not nothing, though.”

“My medals? And shit.”

“Reiner said you keep those in a box.”

“I do.” Jean pauses, pushing up at his glasses, brows knit with consideration. “I put them back on recently. Then decided to take them off again.”

“And you think you lost them.”

“Seems like it.”

“Well.” Marco says decisively. There’s no need to elaborate on the use of the word _lost_ in this instance, and they both know it. “I really hope you find them.”

“Yeah.” Jean sighs. “Me, too.”  
  


**Present Day**

It’s an undeniably beautiful morning. Blue skies and a cool breeze, a veritable concerto of wildlife chirping all around. A true pity, Jean thinks, to dampen such a nice day.

He looks straight ahead while heading past his boyfriend, and into the heart of his overwrought, uninspired apartment. Jean’s brought a box, the top taped closed in hopes that Liam won’t try over analyzing all of the things being returned to him.

There’s no sentimental value to any of it. Just a whole lot of stuff Liam seems to have left at Jean’s place in an effort to lay claim to somewhere he doesn’t belong. More than likely, to lay claim to Jean himself. A constant, visual reminder of the ugly noise Jean has allowed into his life.

Conversely, almost none of the possessions Jean has come to pick up ended up at Liam’s place voluntarily.

Thankfully, Liam’s apartment is basic and small, and makes for relatively quick work. He follows Jean into the bedroom, where he scoops up several articles of clothing that are piled near Liam’s nightstand. Staying right on Jean’s tail, he allots him no space and makes faux-casual conversation before heading into snarkier, more familiar fare.

“You’re taking back the blue shirt?” Liam whines. “I like the way you look in that shirt. Makes those shoulder blades stick out. Fuckin’ wings of an angel.”

Awkward silence is the most Jean offers the comment. It’s to the point that he rarely counts it anymore, and is left increasingly unaffected. But that’s fine. The more it occurs, the better Jean’s motivation to see this thing reach its end.

They’d met not quite three months ago, in one of the usual, charming-campus-life sort of ways. Liam had walked into a class titled _Modern Approaches to Logic and Philosophy_ to find Jean already there, poring over notes and annotations. Despite Jean’s place at the front of the room, Liam had arrogantly mistaken him for an overly prepared underclassman trying not to get in over his head.

He’d sauntered up, leaned on the desk and asked if he might be able to give Jean some help. 

Jean had flashed him a bitingly sweet grin in return. “Not unless you can tell me where I left my answer key.”

Jean had been playful then. Excited and passionate, accidentally pretentious yet easy to work with. It irritated Liam that Jean could walk that line in academia, that he could take charge of a classroom while maintaining a sense of humility about it.

Jean was the sort of instructor who expected his students to handle the bulk of their material outside of the classroom, leaving class hours for a mashup of lecture and open-floor discussion. On the flip side, he kept generous office hours, which often filled up with students looking for one-on-one help.

He was never intimidated at the prospect of being questioned or challenged by a student, which Liam liked to point out, wasn’t actually a strength and would eventually facilitate the downfall of Jean’s career.

 _“Amongst other places.”_ Liam liked to say.

The beginning had been somewhat different, of course. With wit and charm on his side, all Liam had needed was a bit of time to secure himself a date. He’d dropped Jean’s course early in the semester in favor of lighter fare, going so far as to admit the class had never been more than a filler anyway.

But Jean had smiled so handsomely when Liam pushed the glasses onto the bridge of his nose for him. Liam had apologized for his candor while noting his choice would alleviate them from any compromising positions, should he decide to ask Jean to dinner.

Now all Liam needs to do is speak, and it’s precisely the sort of thing to help cement Jean in his decision.

“So.” Liam inhales dramatically. “You think you’re ending it, apparently.”

“I’m breaking up with you.” Jean confirms, his eyes scanning Liam’s bookcase for any of his own that have been tucked away there. He’s less concerned with the clothing in his lap than he is the books or items he’s long since suspected Liam of taking.

Liam just scoffs, whips his hand out to grab a book before Jean can reach it. Takes his time leafing through the pages, traces his finger through the crease with a cold smile before finally handing it over. “This after you decided you don’t like having sex with me.”

“That’s not what I said.” Jean glares. “And you know it.”

It was true that Jean had put sex on hold, though there was no easy or solitary answer as to why.

On one hand, Jean’s unwillingness to sleep with his boyfriend had to do with the lack of intimacy put into it. Liam was decidedly selfish in their lovemaking, if it could even be called that. Other times, he could be outright disrespectful, criticising Jean to the point that he often felt stiff or uninspired before they’d even begun.

The more Jean began to think about it, the less he believed Liam had ever reached out with an affectionate touch the entire time they had been together.

There were other factors at play, too. Matters far more personal, to the point that Jean had begun to play them quieter and closer to the chest. More complicated than the cut-and-dry business of ridding himself of a condescending and worthless boyfriend.

There was no easy way to explain that he was emerging from one season of life, trying to abate his nerves while transitioning into another. Shifting from a cultural acknowledgement of the Catholicism he’d grown up with, and beginning to apply certain ideas and principles to his life.

Jean was used to feeling the pressure to perform for more than one side. He had learned as a teenager what it was like to be an outlier within traditional religious communities, including the one he’d been brought up in.

College had been no different. He’d abandoned toxic people as many times as he’d left behind toxic places of worship, took no issue with endeavoring forward on his own.

There’d been a period of atheism that while Jean had not expected to find within himself, had not managed to deter his fascination toward religious studies stemming from either the East or West.

There was nothing sweeping or romantic about the renewal of Jean’s own faith, which was far more organic an experience than even Jean could have predicted. It was in no way supplemented by the years of theological academia that also defined him. Nor was it complete. 

Be that as it may, Jean understood the crux of what he believed in whether or not it came with a church. And as he’d once overheard his mother tell his father--fuck what the congregation thinks.

On that note, Jean had decided, fuck anyone with only disheartening bullshit to say. The more Jean began to piece his life together, the clearer it became that Liam could have no place in it.

Now, he doesn’t spare any emotion in his explanation, has nothing left to give where Liam is concerned. “Not seeing a future for us--or anything good for that matter--kinda took the wind outta my sails. And I’m not sleeping with you if I have to force myself into it. We might as well be done.”

Liam stares at him now, cruel mirth in his eyes as he shakes his head. “What’re you saying, Jean? That if you can’t have sex, then it isn’t worth it? Where’s the substance in that?”

Jean ignores him, finds several more of his books, a headful of doubt that Liam ever had any intention of reading them.

“So what do you do now?” Liam flips a book from the case onto the floor, and then another. “You raise the bar… Look for a man to marry? Someone that makes you feel good enough to know you’d get to have your sacraments if you were straight?”

Somewhere in the dregs of his mind, Jean knows he doesn’t owe anyone an answer. He reminds himself of that now, keeps his mouth closed and his focus on the bookcase.

Liam eyes one of the first editions still on the shelf, fingers it precariously just to see if it’s enough to get a rise out of Jean.

“Or do you just keep on writing those research papers, and sneaking into parishes after hours to do it alone?” Liam implores, this time focusing on a black book with no lettering, playing with it until the book teeters over the edge.

“It’s spring break.” Jean speaks through grit teeth, reaches out and takes hold of the first edition and the black book. He can feel his temperature rising, his calm quickly dissipating. It takes all of Jean’s energy not to adopt a defensive posture, but somehow he manages. “Go find someone into casual fucks, who doesn’t require mental engagement.”

“Why?” Liam implores. “It’s way more fun dicking around with you.”

Holding tight to his armload of possessions, Jean stands. “Is this all of it? Or did you take anything else?”

“You might find some more bullshit. Or not. Take another look around, it’s up to you.”

Jean eyes him, studying the person he once found roguish and entertaining. He can remember the first time that’d changed. He can recall how it felt to acknowledge the pure shock on his own face as he’d returned home one evening to find Liam relaxing on his couch. Paging through a finished journal Jean had recently shelved, not unlike the black book he now adds to his reclaimed possessions.

That’d been a turning point in their still young relationship. It’d been the start of the end, where spending time with Liam siphoned more warmth out of Jean than he could possibly attempt to gain.

No longer trusting that condescending humor as harmless and playful, Liam had sewn the seed of distrust in Jean by helping himself to personal details Jean hadn’t been prepared to offer. It hadn’t taken much longer for Jean to understand what a dead end this relationship had become.

“Forget it.” He mutters. “Whatever it is, isn’t worth it. I’m out of here.”

“Are you sure?”

Jean stops, but refuses to look back. He braces himself for the awkward task of opening the front door, is grateful when it isn’t nearly as cumbersome as he’d feared.

“You’re a liability, you know.” Liam says. “You come with too many obstacles and rules. Good luck finding a dude who’ll put up with it.”

“The fact that you assume I need to be in a relationship in order to be happy proves how little you know about me.” Jean spits from the doorway.

All Liam can do is laugh. “When’re you ever happy?”

Jean is angrier with himself for pausing to hear this than he is with Liam saying it. But then, it’s what he expects from both of them.

“M’plenty happy when I’m not with you.”

It’s the last say between them, as Jean accents the words with the shutting of the front door. He makes haste for the car, gripping so tight to the books in his arms that his fingers begin to hurt. It’s the lightest Jean has felt in some time.

Having just surpassed that final mid-semester hump, all Jean wants now is to look ahead. He’s too busy planning the next big thing to allow this to be anything more than a shady blip on his radar.

Better days are coming, where the focus will be on the countless good things that lie in front of him.

Clarifying and deepening his work is at the top of Jean’s list. He still needs a greenlight on his dissertation, and hopes at least one of the department chairs from his next school might be interested in hearing about the curriculum he’d like to develop.

And then there’s the matter of learning to live with himself. Alleviating himself of some of the fixations he’s carried around for too long. Believing his work has merit beyond a surface level. It would be nice, Jean thinks, to feel as if he’s legitimately contributing to this world and not simply fucking around.

It seems a luxury to not be so hard on himself, though Jean isn’t so sure he’d be comfortable without a certain level of self-criticism to adhere to.

But it’s not all work. Perhaps more than the rest of it, Jean is looking forward to spending time with people for whom he genuinely cares. He misses being able to see Reiner whenever he wants. The two of them had grown up together; their families taking vacations together, despite a three year age gap the two of them petitioning their parents to stay in the same school as one another.

There had been many a weeknight where Jean would go to bed in a quiet house, only to come downstairs for breakfast to find Reiner demolishing a bowl of cereal and sneaking sips of his Aunt Susan’s coffee.

One of the main draws to the college Jean had been looking at for his doctoral studies is its proximity to home. He’s yet to tell his family that he’s coming for more than a simple visit, has in fact been accepted into his program at Reiss College, and will be taking a teaching position, to boot.

Jean isn’t altogether sure why he’s yet to share his good news. There’d be no end to the beaming from his mother, the literal and proverbial claps on the back from his father. Reiner would drawl that he knew it, that Jean never had anything to worry about.

Reassuring as all of this is, there’s a part of Jean that knows this is the very thing he’s trying to put off. He doesn’t deserve the accolades, has had one thing handed to him after another.

He wonders, though, what Marco might say.

For as excited as he can get over finding out Marco has called, or is online, Jean is very curious as to how it’ll be to finally exist in the same room as each other.

Marco also happens to be Reiner’s best friend. It’s a fact for which Jean has had to talk himself down from more than one precipice of guilt.

Not that Reiner seems to care. He’s told Jean on more than one occasion how he looks forward to the three of them having the chance to share spaces together, to finally stop relying on group texts and computer screens.

Jean tries to ignore how intensely Reiner had insisted on riding his ass upon learning about Liam. Or rather, upon Reiner catching a glimpse of Liam’s personality and watching Jean try and justify him.

Not that he would be a problem anymore.

When Jean hasn’t been inundated with academic minutia, when he hasn’t been busy trying to rationalize or ignore Liam’s bullshit, he’s found respite in apartment hunting for options near the home Reiner and Marco recently bought for themselves.

It will be nice to have that kind of proximity back. More than the fact that Jean wants it, he recognizes that he probably needs it.

There’s an empty box on the passenger seat of the car, waiting for whatever Jean needed to take back from Liam. He dumps the clothes in first, carefully nestling the books into place after. This can’t be all of it, he knows. But it will have to be the last of it.

What Jean wants most now is to rest for a moment, to lay the seat back and catch his breath. But that would give Liam one more opportunity to study him, to find some little nugget to try and manipulate him with, and Jean won’t have it.

It’s a two hour drive to Reiner and Marco’s place. If he gets going now, there should be enough time to crash on the couch before they head out to the group dinner they hold with a handful of friends a couple times a month. It’s mostly made up of the same folks Jean has been gaming with, plus a few additional people thrown in.

Jean had been given a free pass on the dinner date. Assurances had been made that if he wasn’t up to it, that he needn’t attend. As generous as the offer had been, it was also a non-option. Not attending would inevitably raise future questions with Reiner, and he wanted none of it.

Not to mention the fact that Jean was already familiar with several members of his cousin’s friend group. Almost two years of playing World of Warcraft had allotted him a friend base, a support system, even, that he hadn’t expected to gain. He wasn’t about to let himself get in the way of finally meeting all of them.

But first, he has to get there. Jean sighed quietly, pawing at the keys sticking out of the ignition before giving them a turn. Thrumming to life, Jean guided the car out of Liam’s apartment lot for the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know this story hops around a lot in terms of its timeline.
> 
> Major hugs and love to Toni always, but also some extra for lending me her spreadsheet, because I'm going to be using her model to better organize _Redemption Song_ and keep everything straight. And then I'll be going back through all the chapters to denote time skips in a clearer way. :)


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco dismisses the thought, realizes how cold it still is when a cloud of their breath lazily merges in the evening air. He’s looking Jean over, combing his features for signs of judgement or ire, but he comes away with concern instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So four months transpired between the first two chapters of this story, lol. I regret nothing. I'd like to give a very big thank you to my friends [Dani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pilindiel/pseuds/pilindiel) and [Toni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Watergirl1968/pseuds/Watergirl1968), who both mean so much to me. Thank you both for brightening my days, for listening to me about both real life matters, as well as fic stuff. <3
> 
> Also! I cannot take credit for Spinners Blues & Billiards, which you'll read about below. That amazing place and a few key pieces therein were the brainchild of Toni, who wrote me a birthday fic based off her vision of this au. **< 3**

**Last December**

“Did you know you can get brain freeze from laying on a metal bench?”

“What?” Marco takes the phone off speaker, just to make sure he’s heard right.

“It’s true.”

It’s not as if Marco hasn’t been laid out on a hockey rink at various moments in his life. Even so, Jean’s current situation isn’t what he would call comfortable. “Dude. _Move._ ”

Resting on the edge of Cumberland County is the secluded residential enclave of Legacy Pines. Situated upon pre-existing clearings once intended for strip malls and office buildings, the foreclosed pockets of bare land were bought up in the nineties by then fledgling development firm Kirschstein & Smith.

Land and species conservation had been the idea; an opportunity to invest in ecologically viable homes that worked almost entirely around what nature had already established there. Working in tandem with the Maine Conservation Alliance, the community’s developers are also property management, and have been known to maintain notoriously stringent regulations.

A risk at the beginning, almost thirty years later Legacy Pines accommodates roughly a hundred homes, and weaves throughout hundreds of acres of floral and fauna. Solitude and anonymity are just another perk residents are afforded, and it’s not unheard of for neighbors to often remain perfect strangers. Unless, of course, you happen to be related to Jakob Kirschstein.

The metal bench in question has been molded from recycled cast iron, and sits at the edge of a small lake that’s been named for none other than the man now lazing in front of it.

“The only way I’m getting off this bench is if it’s to go for a walk in Reiner’s Woods.” Jean asserts. “And I’m not really in the mood for that.”

“Oh. Well, then.”

“My dad’s about to shit himself over Mrs. Freudenberg and her flyaway organic potting soil bags.” Jean muses. “He’s all ‘ _It’s December, Susan! She’s hoarding them in her garage and then just lets them go when and where the wind blows them!_ ’”

Marco’s unsuppressed laughter is worth throwing Jakob Kirschstein’s lovingly neurotic ass under the bus, and it does wonders for Jean’s mood. He shares another one of his dad’s classic anecdotes, just to hear it all over again.

It has the desired effect, and Jean can’t help but remember that when Marco laughs he gets crinkle lines at the corner of his eyes.

“Happy holidays, I guess.” Marco says, his words soaked in residual mirth.

“Yep.” Jean sighs, a set of wooden beads peeking out of the hand he lets hang toward the ground. “Happy holidays.”

There isn’t much to say, though neither of them is ready to hang up. Where Marco spends the holidays with his grandfather and no one else, Jean is surrounded by enough people that he occasionally requires time alone and fresh air.

Jean’s ear aches from the cold and holding the phone, but all he does is stare down the recently shoveled trail that leads into the woods. He readjusts then, turns and focuses on the Christmas tree poised at the center of the frozen lake.

As a child, Jean had often helped decorate the towering tree. Standing on Reiner’s shoulders to place the star, chiding their mothers’ bated breath that neither of them would topple into a bed of Balsam fir.

These days, Jean doesn’t know who does the decorating. He doesn’t ask his parents, would rather assume they’re still the ones dragging the tree onto the ice. Every time he comes home it feels as though everything has changed, and still nothing at all.

“I dunno.” Jean sighs quietly. “Can you just tell me something good, or whatever?”

As it turns out, Marco knows just the thing. He’d actually been withholding the information in the event it turned out to be a somber day, with Jean looking for permission to be in a mood.

“They picked me.” Marco answers, words exhaled in a single excited breath.

The air between them changes, and Jean immediately brightens. “Serious?”

“Yeah! Armin and Annie came by my grandpa’s this morning, actually. Said Jack had a gift for me, but first he wanted to know if I’d be his godfather.”

“No shit?” There’s pride in Jean’s voice, and it would not be too much to say he is beaming. “Congrats, Marco.”

Jack Elliott Arlert had come into the world only a few weeks prior. Annie had been so casual about her pain that day, it had required Armin to tell her just how close her contractions were to one another, and that they needed to _go_. Had they waited any longer before hightailing it for the hospital, the doctors had warned, it would have been likely Jack would have been welcomed in the backseat of a car in the middle of a snowstorm.

Several factors had led Jack’s parents to choose Marco as his godfather. Or as Annie preferred to say--it’d been Jack who’d chosen Marco.

While there had been no shortage of love and attention for the new family of three, it had been Marco’s ability to walk the line between knowing when to be present and when to back off that had taken him from the shortlist of candidates to the top.

It’d been Jack’s reception to Marco’s calm, easygoing attention that had made him the clear choice. That much had been obvious after Sasha had texted a photo to Armin and Annie--Jack, asleep on Marco’s chest during a sleepy afternoon visit.

One week old, and already an opinion on the entire world, Jack had been plucked from Armin’s weary embrace while Marco insisted he follow Annie to the bedroom, and nap for as long as he could get away with.

Marco had anticipated a debate, was amused and surprised at how quickly Armin had bolted for the bedroom. It’d been just him, Sasha and Jack after that. Marco had continued entertaining the baby, discussing and validating every little whine and cry, while Sasha restocked the freezer and filled the kitchen with warm, inviting smells. In between tasks, Sasha had peered into the living room, and had snapped what would become a favorite family photo.

“Yeah but,” Marco asks Jean now, “What if I fuck it up?”

“Impossible. You’re going to be great.”

“It’s not just some novelty, though.” All of Marco’s concern and self-doubt seems to pour out in this single statement. “It’s a whole expectation. A role!”

“And you’re sitting here wondering why they chose you…” Jean says fondly.

“They don’t seem to mind that it’s just me?” Marco keeps going. “I asked about Chris and Ymir, and they didn’t care.”

“Why should they?” Jean challenges. “If they wanted a set, you’d of never been an option in the first place. You went from being a basic, friendly coworker like five years ago, to one of Armin’s best friends. Which, his wife can trust that, and is obviously close to you now, too. So.”

Marco allows himself to pause before answering, sits in comfortable silence while Jean waits. “I’ll end up old and alone, but I still get to be this kid’s godfather. So that’s something.”

“Yeah.” Jean blanches, though he manages to keep it out of his voice. “It’s totally something.”

“Jean?”

Another long pause. It stretches to the point it feels rife with all the countless things each of them continues to leave unsaid.

“Whassup?”

“I’m glad we’re talking on Christmas.”

“Yeah, dude. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

  
  


**Present Day -- End of March**

It’s barely past midnight when Marco begins to actively campaign his body for sleep, though hardly any comes. He tries to abate the insomnia with controlled breathing, but it's no dice. Moves onto progressive muscle relaxation techniques, but all that does is remind him never to tell the pharmacy it’s no big deal they ran out of his sleep medication until the following week.

Eventually Marco bargains with himself over his morning to-do list, choosing between what he needs to accomplish and what is expendable in case he ends up cutting into those mid-morning hours in search of rest.

By one in the morning he decides it’s a lost cause, that sleep is a false concept and rest is nothing more than a myth. With that, he gets up to set about his to-do list anyway.

Marco cleans both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms, and then the half-bath. Takes a few minutes to change the bandaging on his waist since he’s already there, then moves on.

There’s no reason not to vacuum, seeing as Reiner sleeps like the dead. The rugs don’t take more than a few minutes of Marco’s time. It only seems right to sweep and mop immediately after, an endeavor that eventually leads Marco into the kitchen.

He rotates the contents of the refrigerator and cupboards, writing out a reasonable looking grocery list along the way. The countertops glisten, are damn near showroom quality by the time Marco is finished.

The sun is just beginning its ascent when Marco embarks on the thirty minute drive to the nice grocery store in Augusta. It’s not his first time doing the shopping before most of the world has risen. He greets everyone he passes in the sparsely populated aisles; most of them being nocturnal employees preparing the store for the upcoming day before scattering back to their own beds.

They all nod or say hello in return, as familiar to Marco as the staples he tosses into the shopping cart. The sole reason he doesn’t learn their names is to avoid getting too chit-chatty with anyone, lest they deem him too familiar anywhere in the future.

There isn’t much of a difference between what he picks up now from any other day, a fact he’ll most certainly be giving Reiner hell for. Jean is visiting for a week, yet their kitchen has been whittled down to little more than the necessities.

Walking the aisles, Marco’s got no idea what sort of things Jean does or doesn’t like to eat. That in itself strikes Marco as strange, though it isn’t as though he’s had an opportunity to make use of such information, anyway. He eventually talks himself down from overanalyzing it, knows perfectly well it’s a non-issue whose weight doesn’t belong on his shoulders.

In the end Marco defers to several of his mother’s recipes he’s long since memorized. Hearty, robust Italian dishes that when made in the right proportions used to feed their fraternity for days.

Just thinking of the meals eases his mind, enough so that he feels clever when suddenly remembering that Jean has a thing for a certain orange craft beer. It’s the last thing Marco throws into the cart before calling it a day, more than pleased with himself the entire way home.

Having arrived, Marco cracks open every window he passes to invite the chilled spring air and that Jack Pine scent inside. Finally collapsing into bed, he rests easy knowing the house is clean and well stocked. Drawing the blackout curtains closed, Marco hunkers beneath the warmth of several blankets, allows himself to drift off to the deep satisfaction of having earned his bit of rest.

Marco wakes some time later to the sound of voices outside his window. His body can’t decide whether to bolt upright, or to curl inward when a single peek around the curtains shows that the sun is beginning to set.

Jean and Reiner are out in the garden. Marco listens to their back and forth, unable to make out the words though their inflection is indicative just the same.

Reiner is hovering, he can tell that much. Questions that receive sharp, single word answers, followed by more uninvited questions. Jean concedes eventually, gives less resistance and eases into an explanation of something only he and Reiner can hear.

Marco wonders if Reiner’s hands are on his hips, a sure sign that whatever they’re discussing is serious. He continues to listen to the din of their voices from the warmth of his bed, allots them their privacy while imagining Jean mocking Reiner by mimicking him with his hands.

Marco waits for the conversation to lighten before finally rolling out of bed. He has zero interest in butting in where he doesn’t belong, much less creating an awkward silence between cousins. 

Reaching for his old Sigma Nu hoodie, as well worn and as much a part of Marco as his own skin, he’s surprised to only to grab air. He could’ve sworn it’d been on the back of his desk chair, though he also recently spent five minutes looking for the car keys jingling his coat pocket. So it goes.

Shrugging into the pea coat he wears to work instead, Marco heads for the stairs. If nothing else, he’ll cut a nice silhouette, which might even be enough to compensate for the bed-tousled hair he’s got no intention of combing.

Marco is quiet when he slips out the back door, approaching with a certain amount of stealth until he’s upon Jean’s back.

Reiner is telling Jean about the raised garden boxes he and Marco recently finished building. Three beds, each three-by-six feet long, neatly modular and situated with the intention of expanding their grid in the future.

Reiner does a commendable job of ignoring Marco, continues to hold Jean’s attention so Marco might succeed in sneaking up on him. Keeps Jean distracted by describing the seedlings that currently live in the sunroom while they await planting.

Jean nods his head, tells Reiner the garden is badass and ambitious, then proceeds to ask yet another question.

It’s almost too good. Coming right up on Jean’s heels, close enough to smell the gingery citrus of his shampoo on the wind. Close enough that if Jean makes a sudden move, Marco could end up with an elbow in his ribs. It’d be worth it.

Their difference in height is greater than Marco had imagined. He tries not to think about that right now, braces himself for the jumpscare he’s most certainly earned. Jean is still listening to Reiner, still asking one question after another, and Marco struggles to hold his laughter when finally leaning down to hover close to Jean’s ear.  
  
“Sorry, can you say that again?”

Marco doesn’t linger, bites down on an overly pleased grin when Jean leaps at his proximity. Jean whips around, disbelief shining at Marco through stormy hazel eyes.

Jean curses and smiles, shoves at Marco before he allows himself to be enveloped in a hug.

“Unbelievable.”

“It’s about time, huh?”

“You’re an asshole.” Jean says, still unable to wipe smile his smile away. His hand melds carefully to Marco’s waist, fingers cognizant of the bandage beneath as he looks into Marco’s face. “How you doin’?”

“Decent.” Marco tells him. “Getting there. You?”

“Reiner said you guys didn’t kill all your seedlings.”

“Yeah… The garden’s really become his pet project.” Marco chuckles, takes note of how Reiner flips him off while crouching over a box bed. “I’ve never so much as taken care of a fern. Why not start with coastal Maine’s hostile soil?”

The tour is short lived. Rather, most of it had simply taken place in Marco’s absence. Heading back toward the house, Reiner calls a ten minute timer before they’re to leave for dinner, then disappears upstairs.

It’s a touch surreal to see Jean navigating the kitchen. He moves as though he’s always been there, steps around Marco to reach for a new mug, and fixes him coffee.

“Look at us, dude.” Jean muses, handing Marco the mug, before tending to his own. “Chilling out in the same room and everything.”

“Look at us. Who’d have imagined?”

“Right?” Jean’s smile is tight, exhausted.

Neither of them bring it up, though Marco had been well aware of Jean’s plan to end his relationship with Liam. From everything Jean had shared, at best the guy was an egomaniac. A subpar boyfriend, certainly, with an extreme lack of conscience. Jean had kindly refused Marco’s offer to be present, just as he’d declined Reiner’s.

Marco takes a long sip, matching Jean’s terse energy. “Yep.”

“At least for a week, anyway.”

“Well.” Marco exhales loudly. “Guess we’ll have to make it count.”

“Hell yeah.” Jean agrees, clinking their mugs together.

They fall into easy banter after that. Jean details the finer points of his drive through rural Maine, tells Marco to knock his shit off when he tries to make fun of himself after going on a late night cleaning spree.

Marco grins toward the floor and nods. “It’s like a thirty minute drive to dinner? The one downside to moving this far out, I guess. I hope that’s okay.”

“Sure.” Jean shrugs.

“You’re sure?” Marco asks again, laughs beneath his breath. “You already did so much driving today, so if--”

Jean’s hand clamps over Marco’s mouth then, a surprise gesture outdone only by Jean’s declaration that he’s been waiting to do that for nearly two fucking years. “I’m _positive_. Also, who said I’m the one driving?”

Marco smiles against his hand, is at a loss when Jean removes it so Mareco can speak. “You should run out to my car. Grab the front seat and sync up whatever you like.”

“Listener-submitted ghost stories.” Jean decides. “I know a podcast.”

Marco hums in consideration. “Sounds like something Reiner would never pick.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Picking the radio _and_ stealing shotgun…” Marco whistles. “Sounds like you better get a head start before he gets back down here.”

Jean’s mouth twists into that delightfully mischievous half-grin. The one that may as well be a registered trademark, as far as Marco is concerned. Taking the keys Marco offers him, Jean promises to warm up the car as he slides out the front door.

Reiner slows his gait when he finally reappears. “Why’re you smiling like that?”

“Like what?” Marco asks.

“You’re smiling like an asshole.” Reiner informs him. “And that little glint in your eyes tells me you know it.”

Marco only shrugs, makes a noncommittal noise. “I just got enough rest, is all.”

“Uh huh.” Reiner gruffs. Throws a scarf around Marco’s neck and tugs him toward the door. “Let’s go.”

Marco doesn’t need to be told twice.

* * *

Situated on US-201, just south of Augusta, there sits an old sports bar so loud and unvarnished that it gives the appearance of just trying to get by. On the contrary, despite having never boasted an award-winning blueberry vinaigrette, and being roughly forty years beyond its heyday, Spinners Blues & Billiards is no less a cultural institution than its modern counterparts.

What it does have, are lobster rolls and seafood chowder unrivaled in their simplicity and excellence, and a seasonal rotation of craft beers on tap that is second to none. The rooftop patio is a charming asset, undoubtedly with countless stories to tell.

Management saw fit to add karaoke to their repertoire a few years back; an attempt to keep up with the sleeker offerings that have siphoned off some of the tourist traffic over time, and to stay ahead of the curve. 

The venture had been a wise one, having drawn in a generous helping of nearby Augusta’s college crowd. The prospect of belting out Sweet Caroline alongside inebriated acquaintances is somehow incentive enough to keep a revolving door of one-off customers coming their way, while others seem in it for the long haul.

A few major life experiences and quarter-life crises beyond their college years, and to date Spinners is still _their_ place.

Marco finds a free space at the back end of the old gravel parking lot, pock-marked and uneven from all of the potholes that have been unceremoniously filled over time.

The entire restaurant turns to look when Sasha screams in delight. She couldn’t have drawn more attention if she’d run across table tops on her way into Jean’s arms, but nor is there any doubting that he absolutely loves it.

Connie is the only other person to insist on leaving his seat, as he locks Jean into one hell of a handshake. From start to finish, Jean’s arms remain securely hugged around Sasha’s waist, even after her attention has shifted elsewhere.

“Hey!” Sasha points in Reiner’s direction while still clutching Jean. “Nuh uh. Away from the tv screens and get over here. I have questions for you.”

“Sorry, Sash.” Reiner tugs on her ponytail. “We would’ve stopped by earlier, but Jeanbo and I had other stuff, too.”

“I don’t care about that. Where’s your guy?”

“Sash.”

“What guy?” Jean’s eyes widen. He immediately turns to Marco, no doubt looking for an answer that lacks bullshit. “What guy? How does Reiner have a guy and I don’t know?”

Reiner is halfway to cringing, desperately trying to placate his cousin with his hands. “There’s no guy. You’re my guy. My _dude_.”

Jean’s brows perk up, and he leans close when Marco speaks in his ear. “Reiner’s slow-burning with the garden center guy.”

“ _Oh really?_ ”

“You know everyone can hear you.” Reiner stares at Marco.

“And?” Marco smirks, cocky knowing he’s got Jean on his side and not caring that Reiner could manipulate this at a moment of his choosing.

They could easily have gone on forever, were it not for Sasha deciding it was time for everyone to find their chairs, so they might eventually be served. Jean finds himself sitting between her and Connie for the remainder of the night, effectively ensuring he gets a few secondhand details about Reiner’s burgeoning lovelife.

It’s two hours and forty-five minutes of genuine bliss. In his day-to-day life, Jean only keeps such large company during classroom hours and faculty meetings. The desk separating him from his students is a constant reminder that he’s little more than a blip on their radars. Here for a moment and then gone forever.

Outside of this table, the closest Jean has come to quality socialization has been raid nights in World of Warcraft. He hasn’t been in a galleon, the epic forty-man raid, since they began playing two years ago, but he doesn’t require that much interaction to be happy.

Their smaller, weekly meetups are more than sufficient. There’s the occasional in-game run-in with a friend or two throughout the week. Levelling alts with Reiner or Connie, or calling on Marco’s paladin to back his priest up against areas with high respawn rates.

It’s a far cry from isolation, to be sure. Regardless, meeting eyes with established friends and laughing alongside a couple of strangers does wonders to raise Jean’s spirits in ways he hadn’t realized he’d needed lifting.

He’d garnered welcoming nods from the rest of the table. Directly across from Sasha there was Mikasa, whose pointed statements, and cool-yet-concerned demeanor caught everyone’s attention. Her eyes seemed to never stray too far from Sasha’s gaze, despite whomever else she might be talking to at the time.

Beside her was Eren, another member of their guild, who, if Jean was being honest, was the primary cause behind most of their tactical failures. For the most part, the two of them had 

learned to remain amiable while staying in their respective corners.

Armin had come in late, which was apparently as signature as the vigorous handshake he’d immediately offered Jean. The table seemed less interested in Armin’s arrival than it was with the whereabouts of his wife and son.

Plunking into an empty seat, Armin’s immediate reaction is to smile. “Jack fell asleep early, so Annie kicked me out under the pretense that at least one of us should get out for a while. What she really meant is if I wake either of them up by doing dishes, she’ll kill me.”

Next to Armin, a statuesque woman erupts into hearty laughter, the sound all at once crude and delightful. “If Annie gets rid of you, then she’ll have to deal with Jack’s temper by herself.”

“Not true, Ymir! If I end up under the floorboards, they still have Marco!”

Ymir snorts, her eyes shifting toward Jean’s uninhibited grin. Until now, their only interaction had come at the start of these friendships, during Jean’s first run with their gaming group, and Ymir’s last, when she’d mused that he’d freed her to play healer in real life.

“Emergency Room life is no joke.” Ymir shares now, a strong, elegant hand gripping her pint as she clinks it to Jean’s. “Just got promoted to charge nurse last month, too, so consider yourself blessed by my presence on this night.”

There had been a point that afternoon where Jean nearly took Reiner up on his offer to skip dinner. Get some much needed rest while preparing for the week ahead. But then, Jean had reminded himself of how limited his time was here. Six, maybe seven days he’d allotted for some semblance of rest.

Days in which he might have a glimpse at an upcoming chapter of his life. He’d never been a fan of folding the pages back to look at what was waiting ahead, though this seemed like a reasonable exception.

Admittedly, walking into such a warm reception made it difficult to imagine going back to Bangor. It’d become such a chore to remember that despite going through a rough patch in his personal life, that Jean was still returning to a place that on the whole had been very kind to him.

He made a concerted effort to remember graded papers he’d left on his desk, some with comments that went to specific students. Made mental adjustments to the to-be-read pile still sitting on the kitchen counter. The freshly laundered bedding that had still been warm when he’d left that morning, with the hope that the apartment would smell like his mom’s laundry when he got home.

And so on this night Jean engages. Listens with rapt attention as Armin and Mikasa banter about their two-person bookclub. He catches all of the playful barbs and teasing undertones exchanged between Marco and Sasha, doesn’t so much as flinch when Connie and Reiner shout in tandem as the Calgary Flames dominate the screens.

Jean gets caught up when Ymir inquires about what sort of healer he plays, asks how Jean’s disciplined priest’s stats compare to her restoration druid. They delve so far into their chatter that Jean shares that his best moves have come from French gaming forums, details several strategies and moves for her.

Though Eren volunteers little to what is being said, he pays close enough attention to eventually butt his way into part of their amicable conversation.

“I knew it.” Eren shakes his head and grins sardonically at his plate. “You’re one of _those_ people.”

Jean does his best not to bristle, wonders aloud if he’s misheard either the inflection or words.

Eren shrugs, smirks with a mouthful of food. “You’re one of those people whose first language is English, but you pronounce the accents for foreign words like you’re a native speaker.”

“Dude. Quebec is right there.” Jean deadpans.

“Are you from there?”

“Do I have to be?” There’s no disguising the ire in Jean’s voice, or the taunt in Eren’s. He’d come into this situation ready for the possibility they might not get along, but hadn’t imagined Eren would be interested in provoking an argument out of him.

While it isn’t difficult to remain civil, Jean can’t forget how they once lost a campaign due to Eren’s impatience. His inability to stick to a predetermined plan had cost the guild a shot at taking down a long-coveted target, a fact which Jean had zero qualms sharing with Eren at the time.

 _“We_ planned _for this. Forty people moved their shit around to make this raid happen, and this asshole comes in here with a death wish,”_ Jean had accused. _“Just…_ Leeroy Jenkinsed _your way in there, and you took everyone else down for it!”_

_“How about you don’t get an opinion on the matter until you’ve played with us longer than two weeks!” Eren shot back. “You don’t get to come in here acting like you know what this group is about!”_

_“Please! Educate me!” Jean’s voice had distorted through the headset. “Maybe you know how we get the breastplate now, yeah? You gonna finish Ocram’s set for him?”_

It’d taken Marco breaking them up to move the conversation into calmer, less antagonistic dialogue. Unfortunately, it was painfully clear there would be no recovering their losses. It’d be the last galleon the lot of them played in.

But that was years ago now. On this night, Marco watches as Jean handles the interrogation. He’s as curious as anybody to see where this goes, to move past one more rendition of an argument that has more than outstayed its welcome. He’s counting on the public nature of their environment to keep hostilities at bay.

“No.” Eren leans back, folds his arms in front of himself. “I guess it doesn’t matter. But you’re fluent, yeah? So you got that from school?”

“Yes.” Jean answers carefully, already having an idea of where this is going. He and Eren have had more positive interactions than negative, and he’d very much like to give the benefit of the doubt. “So’d Reiner. Your point?”

Reiner groans, eager to provide a break in the mounting tension. “Can we not discuss the fact that we were forced to speak French for half a day, every day for six years?”

Eren smiles when his eyes flick to Reiner, though he’s soon back onto Jean. “So. Private school?”

“Asking questions you already have the answers to?”

“Probably parochial?”

“Again.” Jean rolls his eyes.”You seem to already know the answer to that. _My_ question is, what’s your point?”

“I don’t really know.” Eren sighs airly, adjusting in his chair to better face Jean. “It’s neither here nor there. And I doubt any of it’s my business.”

This seems like a bad idea. But then, Jean is known to entertain bad ideas, unable to help from occasionally going against his better judgement. “Go ahead, Eren. I’m an open book.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay. Then I guess the main thing I’m curious about is how you get away with going to all of these high-brow institutions to study religion while being openly gay.”

The comment garners its fair share of attention from the table, none of it in favor of a follow-up.

“No no.” Jean placates them, turns to address Eren. “S’fine. And to answer that, I honestly don’t think anyone cares.”

“Yeah, but you can’t tell me you didn’t get _some_ backlash.”

Jean nods, trying to quell any number of recycled arguments dancing on the tip of his tongue. “Maybe. But as you said, it’s none of your business. And that’s _my_ point. Students, faculty, dean… You can keep going up that chain, and I don’t think too many people even have an opinion on who I play f _uck, marry, kill_ with.”

“No?” Eren’s mouth twists with skepticism.

“No.” Jean shakes his head. “So this is gonna sound more negative than I mean for it to be, but a lot of theology is a mix of interpretation backed up by group think and ritual. Right?”

“Sure.” Eren hums. “Makes sense.”

“And that’s a daunting thing to challenge, especially when your soul or social standing might be on the line. If you’re gonna be part of a community like that, a lot of time people just keep quiet. It seems easier. But I doubt most people really care. There’re bigger things to worry about.”

Eren nods, clearly not expecting to receive an impromptu lesson in ethics. “It must be nice.”

 _Oh for fuck’s sake._ “What, Eren. _What_ must be nice?”

“Getting paid to study and teach as a way to justify your own existence in a two-thousand year old institution?”

Finally, a lightbulb goes off in Jean’s head. He knows he should leave it alone, knows it’s hitting below the belt, but _fuck it_. It’s been a long day, and he’s simply responding to shots already fired. 

“But the nice thing is?” Jean leans forward, rests his chin in one open hand. “Theologies can’t change without an evolution of thought, and you’ve gotta start somewhere. The rest of it is why they call it faith. But I’m sorry man. It must be tough.”

“What?”

“Not having the confidence to put yourself out there.” Jean’s eyes gleam, his voice full of calm challenge. “Maybe if you grow a pair and put some faith in yourself, you might sell some of that art you like to go on about.”

It’s incredibly satisfying to watch as an unintended sneer narrows Eren’s eyes.

“If you want any more advice,” Jean smirks, “Feel free to sign up for my office hours.”

The insult lands hard, riles Eren all the more. “We don’t all have trust funds to fall back on, you know. Not everyone has the luxury of pissing into the wind for a living.”

“This again…” Reiner curses beneath his breath from across the table. Today is not the day and this is not the topic, and he knows damn well that Jean will not be the first to back down.

“Hey.” Marco cuts in, looking toward Eren as he lays a placating hand on Jean’s wrist. “Maybe we do this some other time. Or not at all.”

“What do _you_ think, Marco?” Eren snaps.

Jean can feel the table’s atmosphere tighten, the faces of his friends telling it all. He’d been nothing more than a prop in what is apparently a long running hangup that Eren seems incapable of letting go. 

“What do I think about what, exactly?”

“Do you have any thoughts on Jean’s _occupation_?”

Marco has to pause at that. Gives Eren a once over and wonders when this is supposed to end, where his line is. “Sure. He loves what he does, and he’s good at it.”

“It must be nice, huh?”

“Don’t do that, man. That’s beneath you, Eren.”

“No, I mean it! Not only does Jean here get to go to work doing something he loves, but he’s set while doing it!” Eren laughs derisively. “I can’t say that I love my job, but it’s enough. And you? You hate your job but it’s also--”

“I don’t hate my job. Don’t project onto me.”

Eren does a poor job of trying not to scoff, eyes glowing with the false justification of his cynicism. “Oh yeah? So what is it, then? What keeps you going back every single day?”

“Do you want me to apologize for making money?” Marco is incredulous, fed up with what Jean is slowly realizing has become a rotating argument with different people. “We can’t all be as tortured and inspired as you are, Eren. I’m allowed to make money and not feel guilty for it.”

“Well, yeah.” Eren is quick to agree, feels himself backslide as he treads into unfamiliar territory. Jean had been an easy, willing participant. No one present has ever engaged Marco in a legitimate argument before. “But you work your ass off.”  
  
“And Jean doesn’t?”

“He’s a trust fund baby! He can afford to wax poetic.”

They both disregard the tension rising around them. Eren tunes out the warning signal in Mikasa’s tone. Marco ignores Reiner’s tugging, as at some point he seems to have started leaning across the table.

“People can have assurances, Eren!” Marco counters. “I have a trust fund. Are you gonna--”

“Your mom _died_ for you to get it!”

It all happens so fast. From the moment Marco thinks he’s actually going to bloody his friend, to the instant he finds himself holding Jean back, instead. Eren rises to meet either challenge, only to find Mikasa planting his ass in the chair.

No one attempts to keep Marco from storming off, or Jean from trailing after him. Everyone assumes that Marco is taking himself outside for a breather, and Jean wonders if anyone would believe it if he told them Marco stops off to pay for the entire table along the way.

Jean is agog as Marco swipes his card, hitting the hostess with that handsome, plastic smile.

“Do me a favor?” Marco looks at her through those long lashes while pocketing the receipt. “When you let them know it’s covered, tell my buddy in the green shirt that my dead mother took care of the tip. Inside joke. He’ll get it.”

Jean waits patiently by the exit, sees Marco’s feeble attempt to hide his eyes from him. Jean simply holds open the door, and maintains Marco’s stride. “Hey. You alright?”

Marco doesn’t go far, stands beneath the cover of a tired canvas overhang and lights a cigarette. His laughter is dry and caustic, but at least it’s genuine. “Can’t remember the last time I acted that petty.”

“S’fine.” Jean settles against the building, embracing the frigid brick digging into his back. “Sorry I made it worse.”

Marco dismisses the thought, realizes how cold it still is when a cloud of their breath lazily merges in the evening air. He’s looking Jean over, combing his features for signs of judgement or ire, but he comes away with concern instead.

Jean makes no effort to hide the way he stares, chews on his bottom lip and sighs as if he’s about to speak. Marco offers all of his attention, straightens himself for the occasion, only for the pub door to slam open beside them.

Ymir makes her exit, turns toward them as if knowing they’d been there all along.

“Gentlemen.” She gives an exaggerated bow. “You’ve been lovely. Truly.”

There’s no way not to smile at that. No way to not clasp the hand Ymir is offering Jean while all three of them take a moment to acknowledge each wild mood swing that’s comprised the evening.

“We do this twice a month, Jeanbo.” Ymir says. She’s peeking inside, looking at something only Ymir can see. “If you decide to move here, I’m gonna give you hell if you don’t start coming out.”

“Are you gonna call me Jeanbo the entire time?”

“When you get your PhD I can start calling you Doctor Jeanbo.” She grins. Reiner passes through the exit, receives a punch in the arm when he comes up beside her. “Besides. I need help keeping this asshole in line. Marco’s no good for it.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Jean speaks around a sweet little smile.

They fall into light, easy banter. Ymir takes Marco’s cigarette away, throws an arm around Reiner’s shoulder as he stamps it out. The rest of the group starts to make their way outside, some pausing to chat while others bid them a good evening and head toward their cars. It isn’t long before Eren reappears, comes and stands in front of Marco.

Conversation swirls all around them, a concerted effort to ease the burden of apology Eren has forced himself into. But Marco’s generosity is strained, and the most he offers is to meet Eren’s eyes.

“Marco,” He exhales, voice strained. “That wasn’t… I didn’t mean to--”

It’s as far as Eren gets before Marco walks off without another word. Makes his way toward the parking lot, toying with his key fob and flashing the headlights along the way.

Eren curses, his head falling back in defeat. He can feel Jean eyeing him, figures he deserves that, too. “You’re not gonna run after your bestie?”

“Nope.” Jean yawns and stretches. “Some of us know when to quit.”

Jean waits an impressive thirty seconds before he starts toward the car, as well, leaving Eren to stand alone with himself. He’ll ask himself another time if it’s petty to behave so contrary, but in this moment Jean goes ahead and smiles.

It was only one night, and it had certainly come with its ups and downs. Even so, Jean knows when he looks back on it, he’ll remember it as having been something great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you know <"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLyOj_QD4a4">Leeroy Jenkins? O.O


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the weeks leading into spring, Marco and Reiner had wasted no time in populating their home with the voices and antics of their most important people. It hadn’t taken that long for the house to fill out, to reflect the personalities of its new owners.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little heads up that this chapter has mentions of terminal illness (cancer), and discusses a character's past with self-harm. Thank you so much for reading, and please take care of yourselves! <3

Marco is never really sure whether or not he appreciates Petra’s sense of humor. He loves her to death, sure. Petra is not only good to Marco, but is undoubtedly good _for_ him.

Then she goes and does something like telling Marco his homework is to consider the questions his client had posed those several weeks ago.

“You’re no fun.” He tells her.

“Marco Bodt, that is a lie and we both know it.” Petra had gotten real with him after that, insisting Marco only had positive things to gain in completing the assignment.

Where were Marco’s investments in life? What was he putting away for?

He couldn’t answer all of it. Not at first, anyway.

It takes nearly the entire week for Marco to scale back and visualize various aspects of his life. By that point, he has no trouble picking out patterns and themes.

Marco had established a trust fund for Jack. A recent development, it’d made Eren’s outburst during dinner even less palatable. Annie is in on it, as Marco knows how much she can’t stand surprises. He’d picked her mind over the sort of big-picture endeavors she and Armin had in mind for their son, then made arrangements accordingly.

Marco plans to wait until Jack’s first birthday, pictures nothing more than a quiet reveal for father and son, while Annie smirks in her little way for having known all along.

In the meantime, Marco simply enjoys watching the account grow.

He’d nearly mentioned the trust fund to his client, had felt the words take shape, only to dissolve in his throat. Ultimately, Marco had not offered this piece of information, because in the grand scheme of things it was not an investment directly in himself.

Likewise, Marco refrained from mentioning the six-month emergency fund he’d created for his grandfather’s expenses. He’d casually mentioned it to a coworker once, had been entirely uncomfortable after being lauded for doing his part to take care of the older generation.

Even when Marco had been a young child, and life was still good, it’d always been the two of them. An electrician by trade, Seamus Bodt had enjoyed forty-five years with Maritime Electrical, and remained active with his IBEW chapter well after retirement. It was not unheard of for him to be seen toting his grandson around town, bringing Marco to weekend fish fries or to visit old work sites.

It’d been Seamus’ willingness to spend his days with Marco while his parents worked that had kept Marco from being a latchkey kid. Days at home or visits to the park, farmers market stalls and art festivals on the boardwalk filled Marco’s early days. Save for the occasional field trip, Marco grew up never seeing the inside of a school bus, and instead kept his eye out for that ocean blue 1983 Chevy S10 idling at the end of the school block.

It hadn’t taken Marco long to realize how much of the greater Augusta area seemed to know his grandfather. Somehow, Seamus always managed to remember all of them, as well. As delightful as people usually were, Marco preferred one-on-one activities to the bustling company of so many others. He relished the days when Seamus was slow to get out of the house, as it inevitably meant they were heading no further than the workshed.

Sawdust across the ground and tarpaulins guarding any number of secrets, no two days at the workshed ever looked the same. Be it sanding, cutting, or polishing hardware, Marco was always invited to partake in whatever work was to be had.

Mimicking his grandfather, who seemed to know precisely what he was doing, Marco would find his own projects to chip away at, while other times taking whatever task was handed to him.

Even now, in his early thirties with a name that comes recommended throughout corporate finance sectors of Maine, none of it will ever compare to that first time Seamus had pulled back the tarp on the restored 1934 Beetle Cat Daysailer that Marco helped build. Or the way he explained to Marco that despite having never peeked at what was beneath, that its success was as much Marco’s as it was his.

Marco hopes Petra isn’t expecting a five-paragraph essay, because in the end what he comes up with is a bulleted list of people he thinks about daily. They’re all people who he firmly believes make his life a better place, and without apology or regret, they are what Marco chooses to invest in.

It’s a small roster, comprised of Jack and his trust fund, his grandfather’s emergency fund, and an option on Reiner sitting at the top of an impending will. It’s a sensible list, if Marco does say so himself. Marco would be remiss, however, if he could not admit his desire to add Jean to it.

In what felt like no time at all, Jean’s visit would be coming to an end. There was never any question about Jean being welcomed in the old farmhouse, but nor had Marco imagined his presence feeling so natural.

Even as Marco takes time for himself, writing his list behind his closed bedroom door, he is cognizant of and sated to know that Jean is either working or relaxing somewhere beneath the same roof. Marco doesn’t think it prudent to think the words, and instead acknowledges how he’s been given a sense of what it feels like for his world to be whole.

Jean’s daily commute between the farmhouse and Reiss College had fallen in line with Marco’s and Reiner’s own schedules. Every night they’d all arrive home somewhere within the same hour, each of them in various states of post-work malaise and pleased to be among family. Or in Marco’s case, something very close to it.

There’s an inherent joy in knowing that there are people looking forward to coming back to the same place as him. Wherever it goes from there Marco doesn’t quite care, until he’s forced to remind himself that at least for now, Jean’s presence is a limited engagement.

It prompts Marco to not work over as much, choosing to ground himself in the notion of just being present. There’s a pleasant apprehension that comes with cooking now, as he desperately wants to get it right for Jean, to make this place feel even more like a household than it already does. It’s a feeling separate from what exists between himself and Reiner, or anyone else in their circle of friends. Where Marco lacks the words to convey the sentiment, he turns to action instead.

Jean is the one who compels Marco toward that.

There’s curiosity in watching Jean learn his way around the house; satisfaction in the way he initially eyes the library, then settles in. Several days into Jean’s stay, and he’d all but taken the room over to the point of sleeping there instead of the guest bedroom.

The library hadn't always been there. The room still smells faintly of pine and dark mahogany varnish. In the house’s previous life, the now beloved room had once been two smaller, drab rooms partitioned from one another.

“We could tear down the interior wall.” Marco had suggested as early as a walk-through with their realtor. “Make a proper space out of it.”

Wielding sledgehammers had provided a sense of catharsis neither he nor Reiner had known they were missing. After peeling back layers of wallpaper and unearthing the home’s original hardwood flooring, they’d knocked out the wall in no time. Going so far as to rip out the flimsy particle board shelving that had stuck out in one of the rooms, never wasting a second glance as it was all thrown into the commercial grade dumpster that sat on the frozen winter lawn.

Years of practicing carpentry beside his grandfather had allotted Marco the necessary skills to build a more impressive arrangement. Before long, the newly expanded room had been outfitted with an expanse of waist-high cabinets that were topped with bookcases that kissed the ceiling. It was at that point they’d started referring to it as a library.

It hardly seemed the point that between them, Reiner and Marco barely owned enough books to fill a fraction of the shelves. But watching Jean examine the room, finding his belongings carefully placed and dispersed throughout--Marco can’t help but imagine the room had been meant for Jean all along.

That settles it, then. Marco adds Jean’s name to the list, draws a large question mark in regards to why he is writing him in there.

Despite standing by his list and the logic behind it, Marco realizes it can’t always be about everyone else. He’s spent a large part of his life learning and relearning this, though it does little to change the fact that serving others is simply a part of who Marco is, and that he likes it that way.

Born Marco Xavier to Timothy and Miriam Evans, Marco had been predisposed to copious amounts of love from an early age. Feisty and observant, Marco was an only child and the primary witness to a fairytale marriage whose erosion had been the byproduct of long term illness and a selfish man.

Marco can still recall the conversation he and his father had engaged in over a sinkful of dishes when he was ten years old. His father had washed while Marco dried, the clinking of fork tines against porcelain bowls ringing far too loud in Marco’s ears.

Something called adenocarcinoma that required immediate attention. There was no easy way to tell a fifth grader that his mother would be spending time in the hospital for pancreatic cancer. One of those things where the word _cancer_ is so far detached from a thirty-something’s own experiences, that it becomes too easy to forget that little boys typically have no idea of its existence in the first place.

Marco had found little in the way of comfort being extended to him, had in fact been told by his father it was time to try stepping up as a man. And while Marco was not explicitly being asked to give up his childhood, the group effort required to care for an ailing loved one, coupled with the shortcomings of others required he do so, anyway.

Without a second thought, Marco had risen to the occasion. Over time he learned to ask for nothing, unless it served to lessen the fatigue of others. Never complained if a meal didn’t suit him, and figured out that bedtime now entailed tucking himself in after reading his own books to his mother.

The survival rate for pancreatic cancer is so bleak, that to make it five years past one’s diagnosis is considered a win. That’s what the oncologists had said time and again. It’s what Miriam had assured her son, when at fifteen years old he’d glared from an empty prescription bottle, to the clock, and back again.

“I’ve come this far.” She’d said, poking Marco in the arm. “I promise one late pill isn’t going to be what kills me.”

Marco had waited for his mother to lay down for a nap before asking the neighbor to sit with her. It hadn’t been the first time Ms. Kefka had stayed with Miriam. It would, however, be the first time Marco had allowed someone to assume he was sixteen years old and in possession of more than his learner’s permit.

He was an adept driver. Seamus had ensured as much while Marco’s father often clocked in overtime. Seamus had even loaded his daughter in the car whenever she felt up for it. Oftentimes he found his own delight from the smiles on Miriam and Marco’s faces as the boy logged his training hours behind the wheel.

On this evening, Marco placed his bets on his driving skills while braving I-95’s rush hour traffic, determined to make the trek to his father’s office. It was routine for Tim to pick up Miriam’s prescriptions during lunch, and bring them home at the end of the day.

While it wasn’t unheard of for an impromptu workload to keep Tim past hours, on this night it was cutting far too close to the grain. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d come home later than anticipated, a fact Marco had long since numbed himself to.

But things were different this time. If his father felt it necessary to scold Marco over his choice to drive illegally, he’d simply ask if it were worse than working late and not calling home when his mother’s oral chemotherapy was on the line.

Marco had become a somewhat common presence at Eldian Insurance over the years, had done his fair share of homework in unoccupied cubicles when his mother had still been in the hospital. Now he wasted no time strolling past empty workspaces and the admin’s abandoned desk on his way into his father’s private office.

There’d been no time for Marco to brace himself. No opportunity to avert his eyes, and as seventeen years of time since had attested, it would be impossible to unsee his father kneeling in front of his desk, with the office administrator splayed across the floor beneath him.

No way for Marco to prepare his heart for the confirmation of long-held suspicions, supplemented by the sight of his first pair of breasts. It’d been just one more gross misadventure when Marco’s eyes had zeroed in to where his father’s hand disappeared inside her skirt, when all he’d wanted was to look away.

“There’s no more Gemzar at home.” Marco’s words had tumbled out of his mouth. He’d moved slowly toward the coat closet, as if the slightest movement might somehow make this situation worse. Marco only stops when _she_ has the audacity to correct him, arms covering her bare chest while explaining that the meds were actually in the lobby, sitting atop her desk.

Despite hating her in that moment, Marco had been unable to keep a haphazard _thank you_ from escaping his lips.

In certain ways, there is relief. In no way does Marco harbor any lingering loyalty for his father, an issue he’d been grappling with for well over a year at that point. Gone with it was the hope that Marco had simply been humoring his increasingly bleak disposition, looking for problems where there were none.

Marco is still fifteen years old when he and his father share their final personal connection at Miriam’s bedside, each of them holding one of her hands as she leaves the rest of the world behind. Tim begging her to stay amid sobbed apologies and declarations of love, while Marco presses his mother’s knuckles to trembling lips, trying to remember how he’s supposed to breathe. Seamus remains close, one hand cradling his daughter’s head while the other holds steady at Marco’s back.

Marco waits until after his mother’s cremation to inform his father that Seamus has invited Marco to live with him. Doesn’t hesitate to admit that he’s tired of sharing a house with an unreliable example of a human being. It speaks volumes, Marco thinks, that his request is granted after a single argument that results in his mother’s ashes coming along with him.

 _“What right do you have if you couldn’t handle_ in sickness and in health _?”_

The only thing Marco had wanted for his sixteenth birthday, was to legally change his last name from Evans to Bodt. It’d seemed all too easy when his father had granted permission for that, too.

They’d heard little from Timothy Evans after that. There would be the occasional check to offset Seamus having a second mouth to feed, something he made certain to never discuss with Marco, and in fact used to supplement what Miriam had left her son.

The hours that Marco occupied with school and extracurriculars was an excellent window for Seamus to fill with part-time work for the shops and boathouses down at the Pier on Jinae. 

What had started out as a favor to update the dock lighting up and down the boardwalk had turned into eight hours of work every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at premium wages. An extension of gratitude from people he’d served and engaged with for decades, Seamus knew better than to deprive them their generosity. It was more than enough to keep any potential concerns at bay.

Marco brought home impressive grades, participated in student government, and made a promising name for himself on his school’s hockey team.

He kept himself busy enough to offset the pits and valleys that seemed to have replaced his heart. Relied on those bright and handsome features to disguise what felt like the permanent wince fixed onto his face, found the scrape of sandpaper against his knuckles while sanding floor frames and boat keels went a long way in sating a quiet need.

It was difficult to discern sports-related scrapes and contusions from self-inflicted wounds, until Marco tried to write off a gash in his forearm as an accident with his ice skate.

Seamus was never sure whether he’d done right by forcing Marco to choose what to drop in order to fit in therapy. He’d always carry regret for having not noticed his grandson needed help sooner, but made certain to adjust his presence and expectations from then on.

There was a period of time wherein Seamus had instituted a no-closed-doors policy, and had locked up various toiletries and workshed tools until Marco felt steady once again.

Nor Marco’s classmates seem to notice when he’d stepped down as their junior class treasurer. Citing it was to better focus on balancing his grades with a burgeoning talent for hockey, it’d been absentmindedly commended as a mature, responsible move.

In the end, Marco chose to smile handsomely and carry on. Focused on those very responsibilities while attending therapy once a week, and acclimating to his first go with antidepressants. On top of it, he did everything that the counselor's office and all the trope-heavy teen movies suggested he do, and in the end Marco began to see the fruits of his labor.

Anything to compensate for the trouble his existence caused his grandfather.

College had been a privilege. More opportunity Marco felt obligated to live up to, although he admittedly felt free to do it his way.

It was the next station in life, wherein he hitched a ride upon the barrage of scholarships that began pouring in during pre-season of his senior year. Marco would be damned if he didn’t set the bar only to overshadow it with another, ensuring time and again that Seamus would not have sacrificed his golden years in vain.

His motivation in joining a fraternity had been both philanthropic and opportunistic.. A chance to build a branch out and focus on something bigger than his own world, Marco had also been hopeful at the prospect of finding friendship or camaraderie there.

Pledging to Sigma Nu had afforded all of it. The opportunity to build and network had been everything he’d wanted. The young men of Marco’s house had been nice enough, the air of acquaintanceship bolstered by the fellowship of fraternity. Coming away with an introspective dork like Reiner Braun as a best friend had been more than Marco could have asked for.

Nearly ten years after college, the two of them were living comfortably while sharing an apartment on the business end of Augusta. The Georgian farmhouse had been the first major decision Marco had made solely with himself in mind.

The only serious and tangible thing he could say had sprung from his own self-interest, he’d been scrolling a website of historical properties when the house had jumped out at him. There was little indication as to the catalyst that had driven Marco toward the battered old house, other than he could see its potential. Whether Marco would live there or treat it as a project, he truly didn’t care, so much as he was simply intent on taking it.

Reiner had loved the idea. He’d met Marco’s invitation to go in on the tired old house with intrigue and enthusiasm, offering his own ideas and resources along the way.

“Do you want him there?” Seamus had asked his grandson one evening over bowls of brown bread and mutton stew. The farmhouse had been under contract at that point, though the keys not yet in their hands. “Reiner, I mean. Used to be you’d talk about restoration and building like they were all your own.”

The question had caught Marco off guard, causing him to dribble gravy down his chin. “Of course! I’m the one who asked _him_. Remember?”

“Don’t get me wrong now. Reiner’s a good boy and all.” Seamus clarifies himself. “But Marco, when’ve you ever had anything all yourself? Things like this was always _your_ dream!”

“Back then I never thought anyone would stick around to do this kind of stuff with.” Marco admits. “There wasn’t any point in thinking about anyone else in said _dream_.”

A beat of silence passes between the two men, the moment pensive, and rife with thoughts of years gone by.

“And when was anything not mine?” Marco adds. “I could’ve quit hockey. Didn’t. No one told me to join a fraternity, _that_ was all me. I chose my major, and I’m reliable and good at my job. Reiner or not, it’s still my name on the deed. _That’s_ what I want.”

Seamus does a commendable job of not appearing overly critical. It doesn’t change the fact that Marco sees right through him, knows perfectly well his grandfather is biting his tongue to keep from asking where in that fraternity Marco stood on the scale of give and take. Nor does Seamus ask what else Marco might possibly want for in his life.

Like so many arguments before this one, it was rendered unworthy of their energy, and subsequently let go.

In the weeks leading into spring, Marco and Reiner had wasted no time in populating their home with the voices and antics of their most important people. It hadn’t taken that long for the house to fill out, to reflect the personalities of its new owners.

Marco warmly recalls the first time they’d had a group over. Sasha had helped to outfit the kitchen, had assisted Marco in cooking their inaugural meal of panzenella with mozzarella and herbs, while Ymir hollered at Reiner from the nearby sitting room.

“Where’re these hidden speakers you were bragging about?” She’d inquired, slow dancing with her wife in front of a blazing fire in silence. “The queen requires a soundtrack!”

Pulling out his phone, Reiner had yelled back for Ymir to hold her horses, garnering laughter when Beastie Boys began to waft through the room.

Eren had poured wine into everyone’s glass but Annie’s, stifling his amusement while Connie regaled the table with how he’d been paid five hundred dollars to clear out an upstairs room two months earlier.

“...and these two! _These_ two assholes neglect to tell me about the _dozens_ of ratty-ass porcelain _dolls_ living in it!”

A cacophony of laughter and groans had filled the room. Seamus had sided with Connie, eyes shooting to Marco while declaring, “You grossly underpaid the boy.”

Marco had just given that little smile. The one where the tip of his tongue pokes out from between his teeth, and when he’d met his grandfather’s eyes, it was clear to both of them that Marco was precisely where he needed to be.

Those were the sort of blissful nights that fueled the point Reiner had attempted to make a little more than a week ago.

“We’ve had people over before.”

Marco had twisted around in his chair, looking Reiner over as if he’d never seen him before in his life. “Not like this we haven’t!”

“It’s just Jean.”

Marco had been incredulous, had been compelled to remind Reiner that Jean would be their first guest to properly stay with them, and that it happened to be for an entire week.

Reiner hummed, taking his time to stare at his best friend while examining his own thoughts. “I’m gonna tell him he’s moving here.”

“Or you could just ask.” Marco crossed his arms defensively. “You might consider that.”

“No. I’m older.” Reiner had shaken his head. “Gonna tell him.”

“Maybe you should tell him to _not_ move here.” Marco suggested. “Then he’ll be compelled to.”

“Don’t worry.” Reiner hummed, full of resolution. “He owes me. He stole my Dirty Dancing DVD when he was six.”

Now, Marco smiles a little at the memory, his pencil dragging across his list, darkening the letters of Jean’s name. Thinks about how he’d eventually found his frat hoodie, and that Jean had mistaken it for Reiner’s after Marco apparently left it draped over the back of the couch.

“Keep it.” Marco had insisted. It’d been the second-to-last evening before Jean needed to head back to Bangor. He’d only made a mild attempt at contesting Marco’s generosity, giving in after being told, “It looks good on you.”

The tips of Jean’s ears had turned red while he burrowed deeper into the sweatshirt, scanning the room for a non sequitur. “You built these?”

“Every day.” Marco leaned against one of the bookcases. “After work, for a couple of weeks.”

“Damn. That’s… This is something else.”

Marco does little more than shrug at the compliment, though he can’t help but smile.“Reiner did all the staining.”

“Don’t go selling yourself short.” Jean had chided. “You’re the shit at this stuff, and you know it.”

“Just wait until I get the workshop set up.” Marco waggled his brows, referring to an old barn that sat on the property. “You’ve only seen pictures of my grandpa’s.”

“You gonna let me see your boats?”

“I’ll take you on the water, if you want.” Marco had offered, trying not to preen too much. “Fixing to sell a restored Sunfish soon, if you wanna take it on a test run with me.”

“Alright.” Jean’s voice had been lilting, his smile playful. “Hope you’re ready for all my input.”

“Oh, your input?”

“Yep. If it’s not a smooth ride, there’ll be constructive criticism. Will there be a customer satisfaction postcard I can send somewhere?”

“Sure. Make sure you use the new address. Seven-Two-Six Thrown Stone Road, Second Floor, Last Door on the Left. You can drop it off at your convenience.”

With precious few places left to take it, the conversation had dwindled after that. A slight, albeit pleasant tension filling the air, only to be replaced by safe and easy banter. Taking playful hits at one another, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and exchanging anecdotes as the night coasted by.

They were well beyond midnight when Jean made another attempt at complimenting Marco’s craftsmanship. Entirely sincere when he shakes his head and mutters he’d never know where to begin or how to proceed. Marco had been too tired to care whether or not he beamed.

“You don’t have to.” Marco promised. “I’ll build you anything you want. Just tell me.”

Now, taking another glance at his list, Marco finally writes his own name at the bottom. Proudly denotes himself as a homeowner. Then he tucks it away, shuts off the light and goes looking for Jean.

* * *

Within walking distance of Jean’s apartment is the college he’s called home for the last six years. He came for his M.A. in Philosophical Foundations of Religion, had stayed for a teaching stint after. An opportunity to network and gain his bearings as a researcher and educator, Jean’s time at Rose Maria College had been intense, but well spent.

Jean had been a department favorite throughout the hiring process. Twenty-four years old when he’d applied for the position, and the ink barely dry on the certificate declaring him a master of philosophy. Jean was young enough to uniquely identify with most of his students while also offering older faculty a sense of deference. It also meant that when Jean was told he’d have no office in which to hold office hours, he saw fit to not complain.

It was a minor predicament, to which Jean easily found an answer in meeting his appointments for coffee at the campus bookstore, instead. As for his own work, he simply repurposed the bedroom of his apartment to suit his needs.

Jean’s apartment is inverse of how one might typically keep their living space. A standard one-bedroom unit, Jean had converted the bedroom into an office, utilizing the rest of the floorplan similar to a studio flat. He’d gone as far as shimmying the clothes dresser into the closet, so as to keep the room as pronounced as possible.

Jean’s work is better facilitated this way. He can come home, unlock the front door and walk straight into the more casual side of his little abode. A typical evening finds Jean kicking off his shoes and falling straight onto his bed, indulging in a bit of nonsense and quiet before moving onto other endeavors.

He’s made an alternate desk space out of the kitchen counter, does most of his gaming here, and has a World of Warcraft schedule taped to the wall where most people keep menu plans and family calendars.

Raid night is the uncontested highlight of Jean’s week, followed closely by running dailies with Sasha or Marco, or getting roped into sidequests alongside Reiner and Connie. Twice a month, Jean and Armin come together to map out future campaigns and discuss how to maximize their alts, and it’s always enough to boost his spirits.

When Jean’s ready to buckle down and tend to more pressing matters, he simply rolls out of bed or hops away from his counter, and steps into the office.

Unfortunately, a break in routine is not always recovered so easily.

The air isn’t right when Jean returns from his week in Damariscotta.

Jean knows what it smells like to leave home, to come back to the thick quiet of familiarity left unoccupied. Knows the difference between the polite, clinical feeling of a foreign room made clean in anticipation of its next occupant, and he recognizes an unnaturally still room that requires human presence to wake it up all over again.

Stepping inside his apartment, Jean discovers this isn’t any of it.

Everything appears as he’d left it, right down to the immaculately made bed. There’s no other way to describe it other than the space feels as though it’s been lived in without interruption.

Now, Jean drops his duffel and messenger bags inside the front door, takes a slow walkthrough of the apartment. Makes a vain attempt at trying to relax after the two hour drive back home. Eyeing everything, scanning surfaces and spaces in search of anything that could be out of place, trying to convince himself he’s just looking for something to do. Jean’s eyes land on the kitchen for a split second, then quickly dart away.

And then he sees it. Jean practically feels the chip fall off his shoulder when he spots the stack of ungraded papers waiting on the end of the counter. Setting them there had been an arbitrary decision right before leaving for Damariscotta. Regardless of it being spur of the moment, Jean knows himself well enough to know that he must have figured he’d be needing a distraction.

Now he makes mindless work of it. Scoops up the papers, and switches to autopilot as he heads toward the office. None of it prevents him from scanning shelves and opening desk drawers, vying with prior memories to find just one little thing out of place. He spends more time opening and closing the door than he does checking answers, or looking for correct use of terms.

Jean makes it ten minutes before needing to leave, shuts the door tight behind him and takes his work to the living room. Unable to put much more than a feeling to it when he decides he just can’t be in the room anymore.

Jean paces while he reads essays aloud. Scribbles notes into the margins while refusing to let his eyes focus on anything other than work in front of him.

Sure enough, the living room yields better results. It takes Jean several hours to finish grading, a reprieve away from his worries that he is most grateful for. Afterward, he promptly tucks the essays into his messenger bag, draping it over the back of a chair where it’ll stay within sight.

Unfortunately, with his only real priority out of the way, it isn’t long before Jean goes back to scanning the apartment for eccentricities and indiscretions.

It’s not worth it.

Liam has always been more subtle than that. If he’s been here, he wouldn’t have left any conclusive trace of himself behind. Just a handful of what-ifs and disconcerting suppostions meant for Jean alone.

And that’s precisely what this is. Jean knows it. Knows that regardless of how much time or emotion he devotes to finding traces of Liam, that he’s got nothing with which to prove it.

Even so, Jean doesn’t question himself. He trusts his intuition when it tells him he’s better off not using the office for a while, and he trusts it while stripping the bedclothes and sticking them in a pile in the corner. Grabbing new sheets from the hallway closet, it doesn’t matter that this is no longer the homecoming Jean had hoped for. That sweet scent of familiarity would have been a luxury, but wasn’t something he required.

An entire week passes by before Jean is comfortable enough to use his office again. In the meantime, he relies on the clothes he’d packed for his trip, counts his blessings for a basket of clean work laundry sitting on the living room floor.

Even then, he waits on a visit from Reiner, first. A request that would appear seemingly out of nowhere, Jean is not without his reasons.

It’s a far cry from the nature of Reiner’s visits back when Jean had first moved in. Back in the days when they’d each been less busy, when Jean was still strictly a student, and Reiner would take the occasional weekend to unwind away from his job at Portland Public Works.

“Quit checkin’ in on me.” Jean would grouse, while tossing his cousin a beer.

“I’m not checking on you.” Reiner would enunciate the words obnoxiously. “I’m here to bug the shit out of you. Workin’ with a bunch of middle-agers who don’t know how to have fun, and knowing damn well you’re not having any either.”

They’d play games until someone cried foul or passed out in front of their screen. Maybe falling asleep on top of Jean’s bed while _Back to the Future_ or _St. Elmo’s Fire_ played out on the living room wall, courtesy of the projector Jean habitually plugged into his laptop.

Now, Reiner doesn’t hesitate when Jean asks if he’ll come down for a day or two. Doesn’t ask questions when Jean hands him a trash bag and asks if Reiner will please clear out the top dresser drawer.

“Am I saving anything?”

“Nope.” Jean shook his head adamantly, gazing toward the office. “Don’t wanna know what is or isn’t there. Just getting rid of it.”

Reiner does him one better, grabs an empty basket and empties out the remaining drawers. “I’m doing laundry. If you try and stop me I’m sitting on you.”

However it happens, Jean is pleased to have his office back.

Being able to transition from one atmosphere into the other is a subconscious need, though no less important to him. Seldom has there been a time when Jean did not compartmentalize various aspects of his life, sometimes to a fault. It’s just the way he’s always been.

Lately, the lines have started to blur.

He’s never been fond of explaining his life choices. How he’s wired and the ways he acts upon it have never been up for debate. And yet, one of Jean’s most prominent life lessons had been that while some people wanted to quash his sexuality, there was another set who felt owed an explanation in regard to his affinity for religion.

Jean finds all of it grossly unpalatable. If he’s to be looked at, he would much rather it because he’s got something worthwhile to say, and not because he’s being regarded as an anomaly.

The older he gets, the less Jean is inclined to keep the various aspects of his identity separate. He’s beginning to find succor in allowing them to bleed together; an endeavor facilitated by keeping himself open with the people he holds dear, quietly engaging them as anchors to the life he wants for himself.

Reiner’s always been present. Whether Jean was currently in a state of indifference or piety, Reiner had always known better than to take matters of faith lightly with him.

Sharing that side of himself with Marco had been another task, entirely. It was telling, Jean realized, that his typical _I don’t give a fuck_ mantra seemed to not apply here. It’d required going out on a limb that Jean never knew how to broach, trusting instead that in simply talking to him, that Marco wouldn’t let him down.

The opportunity had presented itself early in their friendship; an impromptu moment of inquiry wherein Marco had asked why Jean’s Saturday evenings were usually occupied. It was clear by his tone that Marco had not expected to hear that this was Jean’s designated time for attending Mass.

Back then, Marco had been mostly familiar with Jean’s emboldened side; his impenetrable confidence and insatiable curiosity. Marco seemed to expect it even less to hear that Jean preferred this arrangement on account of its quieter, less populated time frame.

“I don’t feel as… exposed.” Jean had confided.

“How about when you teach?” Marco had wanted to know. “Then there’s an actual roomful of people _supposed_ to be looking at you.”

“That’s fine. I’m in control of my classroom and what happens there.”

“But do you _like_ it that way?” Marco pressed.

“It’s easier that way.”

Whenever Marco has inquiries, they come from a place of interest. Genuine curiosity in learning what Jean is comprised of. He’d asked the difference between the professional and personal elements of Catholicism for Jean, sought to understand more of what held meaning for him. He’d listened patiently when Jean would describe these facets for him, had been unoffended during the times Jean would say, “I can’t answer that right now.”

With Marco, fear never accompanied being seen.

Lately Jean finds himself unable to forget a conversation he’d recently gotten into. He’s still mulling over various implications and words, and the fact that it’d been with Armin.

It’d come on the heels of his first evening at Spinners. Whatever was coming his way, Jean knew by the urgent footfall and the kicked up gravel that it would be interesting.

Armin had run after him, flagging Jean down before he could reach the car.

“I can’t apologize for Eren being an asshole.” Armin had blurted out while still several yards away. “But I wanted you to know he’s wrong.”

Of all the confrontations, this one was the last Jean would have expected. But then, Armin had always come across as blatant, candid. Jean had no reason to assume that would be any different now.

“Is he, though?” Jean had scoffed. “I appreciate it, man, and don’t tell Eren I said this? But it’s completely selfish work.”

“No. It isn’t.”

Armin had conveyed such confidence in his answer, enunciated every syllable firm enough that it’d thrown Jean off. Of course, Armin was already answering without further provocation.

“You’re trying to build a bridge.” He’d explained. “If it were just about you, why work so hard? Why subject yourself to public or professional skepticism--to judgement--when you could just take the path of least resistance?”

“I dunno, dude. Just a glutton for punishment, I guess.”

“You pick apart canon law, then put it back together again, and you’re an expert on Catechetical amendments, and--”

“I’m… not an expert on--”

“Yes you are, don’t interrupt me.”

“‘kay.”  
  
Armin had smiled at that point, met Jean’s eye. 

“You went meta on Elie Voland, but you didn’t stop at his work. You roped in his life and influences, his _influence’s_ influences,” Armin had pointed out while finally taking a breath. “You tied it all up with his understanding of original Biblical language versus what was on trend at the time. You made a unique thesis from all of it!”

“Yeah.” Jean had sighed. “Well. What’s on trend now isn’t all that different from what nineteenth century French-Catholic philosophers were dealing with, right?”

Armin had shrugged, undeterred and determined to make his point. “All that means is you have something in common. Also, one day someone else will cite and build off of you.”

All Jean can do is blink, laugh nervously. “Shit. No pressure, right?”

“I…” Armin had taken his time with this thought. “admire--possibly envy--what you have. Because even if I can’t see it, it’s obvious you do. I don’t have to believe the same as you to think what you’re doing is pretty great.”

Jean doesn’t do overly sentimental moments very well. Thankfully, Armin had picked up on this, on top of everything else. The last Jean saw of him that evening had been a colorful, _later gator!_ as Armin sprinted off into the night.

Ultimately, Jean takes heart in Armin’s analysis. Jean spends an embarrassing amount of time combing over the gravity of Armin’s words, before it occurs to him the amazing specificity of everything he’d said. He’d texted Armin at some point, wanting to know how he knew so much of what Jean’s research entailed.

Armin’s reply had been short and sweet _. “I googled your ass.”_

The memory is enough to give Jean a smile from where he now lays on his bed, in the living room that with each passing day starts to feel less like home.

He gives it a few days before making an assessment, can’t say he’s feeling any better about the situation. There aren’t enough distractions in the day to keep the apartment from feeling perpetually violated.

He’s back to work, savoring his routine with a white-knuckled grip. None of it changes the fact that with each passing day, this place ceases to feel like home.

At Rose Maria, Jean can already feel himself distancing from familiar faces. Craving instead to be immersed within a new normal that doesn’t exist quite yet.

Reiner had brought up Jean’s living situation during his visit. Had obliged Jean by not asking too many questions about whether or not Liam had anything to do with Jean’s invitation, or the subsequent unease. Instead, Reiner asked why Jean hasn’t had a roommate since undergrad, to which Jean offered little more than a shrug.

It was easier this way, Jean had told him. Regardless, they were both relieved in their own ways when Jean had accepted Reiner’s invitation to live at the old farmhouse with him and Marco.

Soon, Jean tells himself, as his head falls to the side. Eyeing the bedside table, Jean reaches out, hooks his fingers around the antique bronze handle. Tracing the patterned groove in the metal, Jean thinks about how the handle has felt the same since was a child. Continues to run his finger across the timeworn indents while deliberating his next move.

There are two boxes inside the drawer; identical, plain and small. He’s known for some time that one is empty. He’d left the other alone, choosing for the last several weeks to forgo the use of his rosary to maintain hope that it might still be tucked safely in its box.

Asking himself what he’d like to do, Jean tells himself it doesn't matter what he decides. If he’d been truly insistent upon intercession or prayer, the absence of the rosary itself should be meaningless. He should not rely on tangible ends to attain his means.

Telling himself this does little to assuage the itch in Jean’s fingers. The insistent muscle memory that accompanies the grip and slide of mahogany beads he’s kept relied on for the last fifteen years.

Jean holds his breath, opens the drawer just enough to extract the box in question. It’s already telling that he hears no movement from inside. He’s careful not to tilt or jostle it, chooses to sit quietly and stare at the box from where he’s laid it on his chest.

Laying in a bed that should have smelled like his mother’s fabric softener, settling instead for the false comfort of knowing no one else has laid here, instead.

A hand-carved box kept plain as a reminder against decadence and vanity, that despite praying otherwise Jean already realizes is long since empty.

The weight that accompanies the violation of such quiet comforts is suffocating. But nor is there anything to be done about it. Jean knows he isn’t doing himself any favors like this.

Exhaling slowly, Jean shuts his eyes, feels the tightening in his chest as his hands pry the box open. Keeping his eyes closed, he runs his fingers across thinning velvet, and finds--

Nothing.

It’s expected, though knowing better does nothing to abate Jean’s heart. The Miraculous medal and accompanying medallions were gone. He’d known that. But how nice if the rosary could have been different.

The box just barely dodges the kitchen window when Jean lobs it across the apartment. Something clatters to the floor, and a smattering of food cartons and still warm wrappers fall with it. Rolling off the bed, Jean heads for the bathroom and slams the door behind him.

Six years inside this apartment, this carefully built microcosm of Jean’s own design.

Six years of struggling, living and perpetually readjusting.

In the end, it’d taken so very little for Jean to feel like a stranger in his own home.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean had been quiet after leaving the bar, had barely said a word though he was in no less a pleasant mood as the three of them drove home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CW: Eating Disorders** \- A big heads up that from this point on, various facets of eating disorders and ED recovery will be a part of this story. While I hope you continue reading, more than that I hope you're well and taking care of yourself in all manners. <3

Growing up in the country, Jean is used to a life where the closest neighbor can be as far as a quarter mile away. After spending most of his twenties around college campuses, he grew accustomed to vying for pockets of silence. Jean is also well versed on settling for as little awkward tension between himself and his neighbors as possible, lest any of them find themselves making eye contact after an evening of plate-shattering arguments or sexual escapades.

By comparison, life in the Damariscotta farmhouse is nothing short of bliss.

It’s been nearly a month since Jean officially took up residence at the old farmhouse. He hasn’t even unpacked his bedroom yet, has spent more time organizing and taking over the library than he has arranging his furniture and putting clothes away.

Too many other tasks require his attention that he just can’t justify leaving them undone. It’s May now, and the summer semester at Reiss College will soon be at hand. There are lectures to practice, curricula to memorize, and advisors who need to be reached out to at least a week before any classes begin.

Jean is finally starting to see the merit in waiting until winter to dig into his phd; a suggestion made by none other than Regan Onyankopon, the dean of Reiss College’s school of philosophy and religion. A pious and influential man, Onyankopon had been enthusiastic about Jean’s application, is arguably putting quite a bit of stock in ensuring Jean doesn’t burn out on the long trek toward tenure.

There’s little more than a sense of workplace propriety that prevents Jean from asking the man if he’s this kind to all of his incoming faculty, or if Jean’s area of study is distinct or controversial enough to net the school social and liberal accolades. 

It’s the sort of inquiry Jean’s mother would make without hesitation, and his father would swallow his tongue over. Jean can’t help but be amused at the thought of it, and it’s enough to ease his spirit into accepting that he can simply take one thing at a time.

Suitcases and cardboard boxes will sort out fast enough. There’s no need to worry about it, he tells himself. It’ll get done when it gets done.

He’s memorized the layout of the house, though. Knows the kitchen is directly beneath his bedroom, and thus knows where to rush to when it sounds like a mid-morning robbery is taking place directly beneath him.

Jean arrives just in time to see Marco’s purse-lipped grin from where he stands in the corner. It’s a valiant, if not also failed attempt to not laugh.

“I don’t care what _kind_ it is,” Reiner yells at no one in particular. “It’s a mouse, his name is _Bullshit_ , and I want it out of our house!”

A paper towel roll goes flying toward the foot of the stove, prompting the small creature hiding beneath it to make a run for the sunroom. Reiner curses at the mouse, nearly falls backward into Marco as it scurries by.

“Reiner.” Jean pipes up from the doorway. “It’s tiny and freezing its balls off. It’ll come back in eventually.”  
  
“Then I’ll set traps.”

Jean scoffs, gives a condescending hum of agreement.

Marco on the other hand, decides to play fair and appeal to reason. “Reiner. Are you going to have the heart to clean it up if the traps work?”

It isn’t difficult to imagine what Reiner is likely to be thinking. The idea of an unassuming, bright-eyed rodent getting caught on a sticky piece of cardstock that inevitably spells out its demise is no one’s cup of tea.

Reiner’s got nothing but silence to offer that train of thought, and so segues into his next line of defense. “Fine then. Let’s get a cat.”

Jean lights up at the prospect, doesn’t even make an effort to appear nonchalant. “Don’t you threaten me with a good time, Reiner Braun, I’ve been burned before and you know it.”

“It’s not my fault Aunt Susan thought Levi having a cat was the same thing as having one of our own.”

Jean’s hands fly in the air, representing apparent years of frustration. “Levi never even lived with us! I had to go to his place to see Binks!”

“Seriously. Let’s get a cat.” Reiner repeats, carefully treading toward the back door, making sure the mouse doesn’t take him by surprise as he tosses jackets to everyone. “Like a kitten. Cute and trainable, with its kill instinct still intact! Because that’s nature. If _I_ kill a mouse, then I’m a monster. But if the kitten does it? That’s just letting nature take its course.”

Marco raises his brow, makes no effort to disguise his judgement. “Are you trying to justify wanting a pet?”

“I don’t need a pet!” Reiner clarifies. “I don’t. I’m commissioning a rodent assassin to do my dirty work for me.”

Marco just nods, watches as Jean leaves them both behind as he heads for the car, too excited to even give Reiner the hard time he deserves.

* * *

A lifelong son of Maine, Marco had assumed that at one point or another he’d managed to see everything The Pine Tree State had to offer. All the hours he’s spent on charter buses for hockey. Annual work conferences and weekend retreats designed to foster workplace camaraderie, that somehow always ended with Armin’s wallet growing thicker off multi-office bets taken at Fenway Park.

Seamus had ensured that a significant part of Marco’s childhood had been spent surviving off no more than the provisions he could carry on his back. Pitching tents, finding his own kindling, and living off whatever Marco could take from the end of a fishing rod, onto a campfire, right onto his own plate.

At this point, Marco would have assumed he’s visited almost every commonly known place that Maine, or most other places for that matter, has to offer.

It hadn’t occurred to him that the Humane Society would be the exception. Where Jean and Reiner grew up not having time, Marco had simply already had a few good boys in his life from the start.

There’d been his grandpa’s old basset hound when he was a kid. A sleepy-eyed good-for-nothing who answered to Charlie, that hound’s capacity to snuggle put the rest of the world to shame. It’d been rough when Charlie had died. Marco had been perhaps seven at the time, hadn’t comprehended why they couldn’t just take the seventeen year old dog to the vet and get him up to snuff again.

Marco had been in middle school when one of Seamus’ old pals had gone into an assisted living facility, and had made Seamus promise that her Yorkshire Terrier would never know the steel bars of an animal shelter cage.

“Tilly was kind of a bitch?” Marco had reminisced earlier as they passed by a Yorkie at the humane society. “But if I’m honest about it, she was a better hunting dog than Charlie ever was, so there’s that.”

Marco keeps his eyes forward while walking the halls of the shelter, searching for Jean so they can return home. Moving quickly, Marco tries not to dwell on the cacophony of whining animals, tries not to breathe in the aroma of bleach-heavy mop water while bypassing row after row of dog kennels while looking for where Jean had wandered off to. Marco doesn’t know how well he’ll handle their whines of recognition, or which dog’s face will come back to haunt him hours after the fact.

He finds Jean lingering down by the adult cats, staring down an angry grey floof, who if Marco isn’t mistaken, most everyone else had proceeded to walk on by throughout the day.

“Will you just look at this asshole?” Jean sighs.

Marco comes and stands beside him, peers at the card on the cage. “I might be only three in human years, but make no mistake. I am a grumpy old coot.”

Hearing it aloud only makes Jean smile all the more.

“But Reiner already signed the paperwork for the kitten. He named her after that baby in Downton Abbey.”

“I know.”

Marco proceeds to watch as Jean sticks his finger into the cage, whispering to the grey cat that he’s a wuss if he refuses to accept Jean’s affection.

A few of them had been at Spinners the previous night. An impromptu night out for the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the mood had determined there simply hadn’t been anywhere else worth watching such an epic game.

Marco would have gone, regardless. Seeing Jean’s enthusiasm to step out, to the way he’d stolen the phone from Reiner to personally ask Connie if there were any worthwhile bets on the night’s game, or the razor sharp grin he’d gotten afterward. It’s not that there had ever been a doubt, Marco knows, but there remains a distinction between feeling someone belongs and truly seeing it with one’s own eyes.

That comfort had made itself apparent again that night, while sitting on the decadent cognac sofas in front of two big screen tvs. The game’s intensity had skyrocketed, and with it space increasingly came at a premium.

There was a solution, however. Marco had taken a chance on it when he’d stood Jean up from the couch before carefully guiding him into his lap.

Strong, cautious hands melded to Jean’s hips, who for his part dared not move from his place on Marco’s thighs.

“Is this alright?” Marco had asked quietly.

Jean could only nod in response, his eyes fixed on the screen, and a tight smile plastered to his face.

“I won’t do anything.” Marco had wanted to assure him, his voice thick and resolute at the shell of Jean’s ear. “I promise.”

“It’s okay.” Jean finally exhaled. “You’re good.”

Marco hadn’t misled him, had kept Jean only as close as he wanted to be. Not that Jean was complaining. Not about Marco’s attention, or the way he used the bolstered energy of the game as an excuse to knead the tension out of Jean’s shoulders while shouting with everyone else at the screens.

Jean had been quiet after leaving the bar, had barely said a word though he was in no less a pleasant mood as the three of them drove home.

Now, Marco replays through last night’s events as he watches Jean muttering quietly to the grey cat. Little effort is needed to convince the cat to inspect Jean further, in turn coaxing Jean to slide the rest of his fingers forward for the cat’s consideration. The movement first earns him a trill, followed by a purr. Jean is nothing short of elated when the cat starts to aggressively rub at Jean with his head.

Marco isn’t expecting Jean to grab him by the wrist, though he goes willingly, obliging Jean’s request to let the cat say hello.

Jean is still holding onto Marco’s wrist when the phone starts buzzing in his back pocket. That’d be Reiner, most likely wondering where the hell they are. Marco just sighs. He’s a grown ass man, and can admit to himself when it’s time to transition from savoring a moment, and knowing when to let it go.

“Hey.” Marco says, only half succeeding in pulling Jean from his reverie. He places a supportive hand at Jean’s shoulder, squeezes gently. “If we don’t do this now, we’re never gonna go.”

“I know.” Jean answers softly, not making any effort to take his hand back from the grey cat.

* * *

The new kitten isn’t entirely sure what to think about it when the dashboard starts blowing air in her general direction. Scurrying inside the cardboard carrier the shelter had provided, she hits the back wall with a soft thud. Reiner can’t help but laugh over it, though he makes sure the carrier door remains open for her.

One tiny white leg extends itself when Reiner comes near, making a clean swipe for his hand before her tabby brown face skids into view.

“S’alright.” He whispers, offering his hand for her to become acquainted with. “Look, Marigold. I don’t care if you kill the mouse or not? Just make sure I don’t see it--dead _or_ alive--and you and I’ll be square.”

It isn’t long before he earns her trust back. The warm air blowing from the vent is more pleasant than obnoxious, and before long Marigold is batting at the flow of air from her new perch on Reiner’s knee.

All bravery is lost, however, when Reiner’s phone vibrates in the cup holder. Marigold doesn’t hesitate to dive back into the carrier as she scrutinizes this human’s relieved groan.

“Marco found him.” He informs her. “Says they’ll only be another couple of minutes… Couple of minutes for _what_? Just grab his ass and head for the exit…”

It’s not that Reiner is feeling impatient. In fact, the situation is quite the opposite.

It’s just that he can’t remember the last time he’s had a good reason to complain about Jean’s ass. A good reason being that Jean is taking too long in the shower, hoarding all of the good U2 cds, or pretending that he isn’t hiding the tv remote.

Reiner savors those small arguments, misses the ensuing petty fights that inevitably followed. They account for only a small number of idiosyncrasies that made up an unpredictable, if not also loving childhood.

What a relief it’d been to realize as adults that moving away does not have to mean growing apart. Reiner isn’t sure how old he was when he’d learned which people in his life were consistent and reliable, but Jean had always been one of them.

Even as children, Jean was constantly in Reiner’s space, drawing an obnoxiously wavering line between seeing Reiner as a role model, and someone with whom he could succumb to complete moods of whimsical idiocy.

Reiner doesn’t need Jean to be under the same roof as him in order to feel that closeness. But it doesn’t hurt, either.

“I promise we’re all good people.” Reiner assures Marigold, letting her sniff him at the entry of the carrier. “Pretty sure you’re about to get spoiled and then some, cause no one really gives a fuck about Stuart Little being up in--”

It doesn’t bother Marigold that Reiner doesn’t finish whatever he was about to say. She’s left the cardboard carrier again, is using her razor-sharp claws to climb up the back of the driver’s seat and onto Reiner’s shoulder.

“Are you seeing this.” He deadpans. “Marigold, _look_. The fuck…”

Reiner stares incredulously as Marco approaches the car, carrying an empty cardboard kennel. Empty, due to Jean possessing an armful of unruly grey fur with a mug unlike any Reiner’s ever seen.

Marco doesn’t hesitate to open the backdoor for Jean. Slides the empty carrier in first so Jean can ease this older, unaccounted for cat into the backseat.

“Who the hell is this?”

Jean shushes Reiner, lets himself be a pedestal for the grey cat as he rears onto the back of Reiner’s seat to fully inspect the kitten. “Show Mingus some respect.”

Reiner side-eyes Marco while he buckles himself into the front seat. He carefully extracts Marigold, one paw at a time from the upholstery. Smiles handsomely for Reiner and nods. “Sorry for taking so long. We’re ready.”

“ _Mingus?_ ”

“Yeah!” Marco nods as if in agreement, ignores the way Reiner practically ruffles with indignance. “Can you believe half an hour ago dude didn’t even have a name? His card just said _Good Boy 32_. It’s kinda offensive.”

“ _So_ offensive.”

“Hey!” Jean reaches forward, tugs on Reiner’s ear. “Mingus wants to go home.”

Reiner ignores it when he hears Marco mention that Marigold is ready to go, too. He just starts the car, takes his time finding the most disagreeable station on the radio.

Not that Jean cares. He’s too busy living his best life; treading into new territory with Marco while driving Reiner up the wall. And for the first time in his life, Jean won’t have to ask his godfather if the cat can please sleep in his room when he stays over.

* * *

* * *

Anyone familiar with the local culture can attest that Spinners is an entirely different establishment at night than it is in the day.

The breakfast rush is largely comprised of previous years’ bar crawlers and party crowds. Locals who perhaps see a bit of themselves in a place that might have cracks at the seams, but continues to receive unconditional love nonetheless.

Some of them undoubtedly remember the days of cruising Main Street on a Friday night before taking their patronage to the old bar dressed in whitewashed clapboard. Flurries of sentiment and nostalgia of the rooftop patio as they wash down wild blueberry pancakes with the morning paper and a local dark roast.

Midday is another atmosphere, entirely. Afternoon conversation runs slower, is unofficially reserved for those for whom talk comes quieter, or not at all.

The floors aren’t sticky yet, the television screens aren’t blaring. Daylight filters in through a bank of windows looking out onto the Kennebec River.

It’s a few hours of solace and singular voices before the evening crowd filters in, bringing with it the boisterous ambush of those nine-to-fivers looking to decompress at the end of another long day.

For Reiner and his people, Spinners Blues & Billiards has become another place to call home.

Graduations have been celebrated here, as well as the initiation of careers. Rounds have been shared over countless job promotions, glasses clinked for the entrepreneurs among them.

They’ve cleared the bar for a couple of weddings, and with Jack now among their numbers have seated a new generation at their table. It’s only a matter of time before Marco has him holding a cue stick between his tiny hands, making excuses about gross motor skills and all that.

But life can’t always be spent at the height of sentiment and warmth. And in this way Spinners has become a tether for certain patrons; the buoy that if nothing else keeps their heads above water, and prevents them from floating too far out to sea.

It’s been there for the sort of quiet moments that were never meant to be group activities.

Marco has often found refuge at Spinners in the afternoon. Back in the days before he’d been certified as an accountant, before he maintained a steady nine-to-five. He’s been known to schedule the odd psychiatrist appointment as an excuse that it’d be better to take his work remote for the day.

Hockey games have been watched in full and books finished, only for him to glance at the clock at the right time to start heading back home.

He’d caught Connie there once, several years ago, with Marco walking into the ruins of a business deal having just fallen through.

Marco had taken it upon himself to draft Connie a proper business plan, given him the names of corporate realtors and loan officers who could help him see his soccer shop come to fruition.

Just as Marco had kept Connie’s business to himself, nor does he press Reiner for details on the days he’s says are for _stepping out for some chowder_ , only to come back half a day later.

Those are afternoons spent with his Uncle Jake, who still makes a point to schedule time one-on-one with his nephew despite Reiner being a whole thirty-two years old.

On this day, Reiner sits alone at a table for two, relishing in the languid pace of a Tuesday afternoon.

He’s waiting on someone. Biding his time without a care in the world, because he has accomplished what had previously been deemed impossible.

On this day, Reiner is meeting up with Bertholt Hoover.

No one outside of the farmhouse knows Bertholt by name, and have instead spent the last several months referring to this man as Garden Center Guy.

GCG for short.

It isn’t that GCG is bashful, so much as he’s accustomed to a certain scene.

As a whole, their group errs on the more obnoxious side of loud. Reiner can cite no fault for GCG’s reservations. At least when he and Marco come to the nursery, they’re on Bertholt’s territory.

It’d taken all winter for Reiner and Marco to fully gain his trust; to breach the wall between overly-ambitious-patrons, and nice enough guys who know where to go for all their gardening needs.

Marco and Reiner have since levelled up with Bertholt to the point of lingering for conversation, and it isn’t lost on them that his confidence comes with a very delicate set of parameters.

At this point, Marco and Reiner have stopped asking Bertholt to join them at Spinners. Jean has only recently learned that inviting GCG to dinner is a futile effort. It would have been great, Jean thinks, for either of his housemates to clarify this before he could have overextended his reach, but here Jean had been their last hope.

Reiner isn’t sure when he has the epiphany that it would be prudent to stop asking for Bertholt to make room for an entire friend group in his life. Regardless of how long it’d taken, he’s no less thrilled after finally working up the gumption to ask Bertholt out on a proper date, instead.

Reiner doesn’t care one way or another how he gets Bertholt to step out. The point is that he’s finally done it. He’d lay out a picnic at a landfill if that’s what it’d come down to.

Lunch at Spinners had been a good idea. Reiner is comfortable here, and he imagines Bertholt will be, too.

The crowd is sparse, and ensures that Reiner doesn’t contend with the constant opening of the door, only to face constant disappointment when the person coming in isn’t the man he’s spent all this time waiting for.

Yes, Reiner thinks. A rare afternoon away from work deserves to be nothing short of easy. With his hopes up and his spirits high, Reiner should merely be proud of himself when the door opens and he doesn’t fall right out of his chair.

Even more grateful, considering the familiar face that now greets him, is nothing like the one he’s been anticipating.

“What’re you doing, Ymir.”

She deals him that roguish grin, pulls out the chair opposite Reiner and helps herself to a sip of his water. “So you finally got him out of the green house, eh?”

“It’s not a date.” Reiner explains. “Just a lunchtime visit with a good friend.”

“ _Lunchtime visit_.”

“Did you know,” Reiner says, leaning toward her. “That he spent middle school backpacking with Sherpas?”

“I did not.”

“Yeah. Instead of spending his awkward years square dancing in gym class, he was filling up his own field guides full of little discoveries, and busy being a citizen of the world. He spent part of high school in _Iceland_.”

“All of that, and he ended up putting down roots in rural Maine.”

Reiner shrugs. “He’s from here. It’s still home. Marco’s trying to convince Bertholt to go out on the water with him.”

“His name’s Bertolt?!” Ymir gushes. “Oh that’s precious.”

The comment earns her a glare from Reiner, though it’s worth it for the red now glowing at the tips of his ears.

All teasing aside, Ymir is gracious enough to know when to quit. “Everyone’s been out on the water with Marco.”

“No, like. His crazy winter ice boat racing shit.”

“Whatever. You’re going to completely ignore my brilliant _root_ pun back there, aren’t you?”

“There’s blood on your scrubs.”

Ymir startles at that, gives her top a haphazard inspection before spotting the offending stain. “Ope! That’s lovely, isn’t it?”

As a gesture of goodwill, Reiner had agreed to taking a single pre-med course at the start of college. He couldn’t stand neurobiology, to the point that he’d almost dropped the course.

Ymir had been a fellow freshman. Devilishly charming and obnoxious as hell, Reiner had initially made a game out of pretending not to like her. Ymir had called his bluff, citing he was as lousy at lying as it was obvious that he was, in her words, _really fucking gay_.

He’d quit pre-med without looking back. Likewise, it’d been a no-brainer to keep Ymir.

“So how’s Jeanbo doing?”

“Fine.” Reiner says dismissively.

“Just fine?” Ymir pauses, examines the blue of Reiner’s eyes. It results in the longest two seconds of his life.

Reiner plays it off with an obnoxious yawn, a hardy shake of his head and changes his answer in an effort to appease her. “He’s great. Loving Reiss, which I guess loves him back. I haven’t had to threaten to sit on him lately, so yeah. Jean’s good.”

“I mean. Baby boy’s been here two months already. Coming out on Thursdays and doing all that braining all week? Is there no rest for the weary?”

Reiner answers with a noncommittal noise. Stretches his hands above his head and sighs gratuitously while staring at the door. “He hasn’t even started his own degree yet. I make him chill. Whine at him for ignoring me in favor of dead intercessors and shit. He’s fine.”

“He and Marco having sleepovers yet?”

“ _Fuck_ they need to get it overwith! Dancing around each other like a couple of middle schoolers staring at each other across the damn bleachers…”

“Marco adores him.”

“I promise you.” Reiner drawls. “It’s mutual.”

Ymir gives a satisfactory nod, is glad to hear it. She’s been trailing the lone waitress on duty since taking a seat, sees the woman eyeing the two of them.

“Alrighty.” Ymir says, standing to leave while downing the last of Reiner’s water. “By the way, who was the guy last week?”

“Hm?”

“Last week. At dinner.” She elaborates. “You guys were heading out, he was coming in. I swear while you wanted to chitchat Jean was about to run for the hills.”

Reiner smiles, though it’s bittersweet. “That would be Father Berner. He's a friend of the family.”

Ymir hums in acknowledgement. “Makes sense. Though I had my money on Eagle Scout or troop leader. The man looks like a golden retriever.”

“Guard dog’s more like it.”

“Kinda surprised to see you be the one chatting him up, and Jean the one wanting to leave.”

Reiner can only shrug at that, his eyes increasingly fixated on the front door. “Father Berner’s good people. He looks like he’s still wearing Weezer shirts under his cassock, so I assume not much has changed.”

“I can see it.” Ymir snorts. “Anyway. I think I see your boy.”

Sure enough, an old forest green S10 has parked in the near empty lot, it’s owner surreptitiously kicking up gravel as he makes his way toward the door.

“Oh, Reiner Braun he’s a cutie!” Ymir grins loudly. “If I were the sherpas I’d have never let him go.”

The best Reiner’s got is a muted request for her to shut up. Ymir answers the sentiment with a wink, blows Reiner a kiss when she finally leaves, taking the exit leading off the bar's veranda. Reiner hardly notices, his eyes busy flicking from the table to the door.

But he doesn’t miss it when Bertholt walks in. Gets the benefit of watching as Bertholt scans the restaurant, and smiling when his eyes land on Reiner waiting for him.

Reiner pushes out the chair opposite him without thinking, throws out a little wave. Despite his earlier insistence, and despite all his nerves, Reiner can hardly contain how thrilled he is to finally be having his and Bertholt’s first date.

* * *

* * *

November, Fourteen Years Earlier

Two days have gone by since Moblit Berner first started thinking about what it is he should do.

Rather, it’s been two days since he began thinking about where he might possibly end up down the road, maybe even as soon as a few months from now.

Praying for guidance, maybe asking for some borrowed conviction, and the necessary words when the time is right. Promising that he’ll try not to waste them on frivolity and sarcasm.

He certainly needs them this morning, feeling as if he’s on a death march making his way toward the office of an athletic coach.

The trek down to the athletic wing required walking past a wall that from one end to the other was one long trophy case. The school was not yet open to students, not all of the lights turned on, and as Moblit made his way down the long corridor, small flashes of gilded metal sparkled at him the entire way.

Coach Shadis is himself an institution, had also been a student of Jinae Preparatory Academy back in the day, before branching out to give the world his due diligence. For the last three decades he’s taught economics, though that is nothing more than a piece of second rate trivia compared to his accomplishments as Jinae Prep’s cross country coach.

Moblit must already have trouble written on his face, as the older man cordially invites him to join him for a walk.

It becomes clear when Shadis doesn’t so much as offer Moblit a chance to grab his coat, that - if they’re going to discuss the well-being of his athletes - it’d be worth his damn time.

They take a lap around the school track before deviating toward the cross country course, an impromptu move that comes immediately after learning the gravity of the situation Moblit wants to talk about.

Moblit refuses to so much as shiver for how cold he is, continues listening to Coach Shadis go on and on about the funding and accolades Jinae Prep has earned under his guidance.

All this despite the soft, lazy snowflakes that flutter around them, all while he stumbles about in short sleeves. They’re a good quarter mile out before Shadis pivots back toward the building, finally dropping the non sequiturs.

“You’re going to break the oath of confession.” He hums. “To go to the headmaster with news that one of his winningest coaches is facilitating a student’s eating disorder?”

“It isn’t breaking an oath when the confession entails child endangerment.”

“That's not what that rule was made for, and you know it.”

He gives Moblit a onceover, makes an ordeal of sizing him up before shaking his head. “You won’t risk your career. Already got a strike against you as it is, son.”

Moblit sighs pensively, watches his breath cloud in front of him and rise above their heads. “Well I s’pose _strike_ is one way to put it. But I also reckon that term’s subjective at best.”

“Look.” Shadis murmurs, “Let me try and level with you. I have no interest in seeing a young man lose his livelihood when there’s no good reason for it. Much less a _priest_.”

“So you’ll speak to your students?” Moblit takes another shot at goodwill, holds onto it tightly, as he knows it’s likely misplaced. “Take a few minutes at the start of practice, maybe? Remind them of the importance of taking care of themselves.”

“Varsity athletes are expected to have their heads screwed on right from the get-go. It’s a prerequisite to playing for me, and they know it.”

“Do they, Coach Shadis? Most adults can’t even say they’ve got all their ducks in a row, what’re we doing if we don’t offer _children_ guidan--”

“They’re already smart enough to demonstrate common sense, else I wouldn’t have ‘em here!” Shadis spits, “On top of which, Jean Kirschstein _isn’t_ sick. He’s smaller because he’s _younger_. Feels like he’s got more to prove because of it, too, and truth be told there are other kids who could learn a thing or two from him. Understand?”

“Crystal clear, sir.” Moblit says with a terse smile, his tone reined in and self-deprecating. “Won’t bother you again ‘bout it. And I want to thank you for taking the time to speak to me about this.”

Shadis almost seems embarrassed for raising his voice. To a man of the cloth, no less. Not that Moblit had left him with much of a choice. “You’re welcome.”

“For taking the time to break it down,” Moblit goes on. “So I know where we’re all coming from.”

“It’s alright, son.” 

Moblit gives him a polite smile. A slight incline of the head.

“Father Berner,” Shadis corrects. 

When they arrive back at the building, warmth rushes at them when Coach Shadis opens the door and ushers them back inside. “If you have any other questions of this nature? Best keep ‘em to yourself.”

“Coach Shadis,” Moblit begins slowly, rubbing his arms to urge them back to warmth, “While we’re both here, could I bother you for just one more?”

“Shoot.”

“Why did you mention Mr. Kirschstein by name?” Moblit asks quietly. “I came to you out of concern for a student, but haven’t named a single one.”

* * *

“Oh!” Jakob Kirschstein sounds more like a haphazard intern about to spill coffee on himself than the founder of a multimillion-dollar contracting firm. But in a world where a person can be absolutely anything, Jakob Kirschstein manages to be a little bit of both.

“Father Berner.” Jakob repeats the name out of recognition. “You’re the new priest! I’m so sorry we haven’t spoken yet! I--”

“It’s okay, Mr. Kirschstein.” The voice on the other end of the line assures him, warmth apparent in his tone. ”We’re all busy people, though there _is_ something I’d very much like to talk to you about.”

“You know what.” The regret is audible in Jakob’s voice, accented by a thoughtful pause before he goes on. “I’ve got investors on the other line and I’m driving? Hands-free! Are you busy this evening?”

Moblit Berner cannot recall the last time he had a day that insisted on being so very awkward from one end to the other.

“No sir.” Moblit tells him, his words elongated by that charming Louisiana drawl. “I’m not busy later.”

“Why don’t you come to our home for dinner? My boys think a lot of you, and we’d love to have you.”

“I’d be much obliged.” He says carefully. “And if I could speak to you and Mrs. Kirschstein after, that’d be real fine.”

“Of course! I look forward to it.” Jakob very nearly cuts himself off when he abruptly ends the call. Moblit has no doubt he will likely end up apologizing for his hasty departure when they finally meet. Jakob Kirschstein just seems like that kind of guy.

It could be worse, Moblit decides.

In the three months he’s been with Jinae Preparatory Academy, he’s come to know Jean and his cousin well enough, believes without a doubt they are fine boys. It comes as no surprise after hearing the openness in Jakob Kirschstein’s voice.

But then, it’s this man’s apparent generosity of spirit that intimidates Moblit the most. Where Coach Shadis’s blatant disregard had been disappointing, it’d made simple work of writing him off. 

Confrontation is never easy when the people involved actually care.

It would have been great to hand the issue over to Jean’s coach, to show up in a more supportive capacity soon after. They could have worked together in aiding a student, though Moblit wouldn’t say he’d expected such a tidy, cookie-cutter response from a man like Shadis.

He acknowledges this is the correct choice, the _right_ choice, even if it does mean he’ll likely be relocating to another diocese because of it. Maybe they’ll send him to Alaska this time. He’s heard nice things about Alaska.

* * *

It’s just after five o’clock that same night when Jean opens the front door. He’s got that same critical expression he’d been wearing the first time Moblit met him at the start of the school year.

Showing up late into a choir room full of sophomores, after being chosen to fill in as their substitute only moments prior. It’d been one of the first classes Moblit had taught in his career. He could hear Jean even before entering the room, his vivacious tenor belting out Green Day lyrics that were probably best sung outside of school.

A smaller student than most, Moblit had not been wrong in assuming that Jean was probably about two years younger than his peers. He’d snuck up on the boy with ease, chiming in and turning the song into an impromptu duet.

Clamping his mouth shut, Jean had whipped around, the priest’s sudden accompaniment scaring him half to death. But the look in Jean’s eyes seemed only to care about determining Moblit’s intentions.

Back then, Moblit’s friendly demeanor and mischievous smile had been enough to gradually win Jean over.

So it is now, as Jean moves out of the entryway and makes room for Moblit to come inside his home. The two of them exchange a look that deserves no words, as anything said would likely insult multiple people’s intelligence.

There isn’t time for much more than that, as within seconds Susan Kirschstein has descended upon them, is welcoming Moblit into their home and asking how his day has been.

Jean trails far behind, trying not to read too far into the priest’s strained laughter as he thanks them for their hospitality, all the while telling Susan her cooking smells delightful.

* * *

“So. You’re from Louisiana.” Susan reiterates what she’s just been told. “But half a year ago you came all the way up _here_?”

Moblit nods around a mouthful of peach cobbler, still hot enough that the vanilla ice cream on top skids across the dessert plate in a half melted mess. “Pointe Coupee, to be precise. Or if ya need a reference we can just say Baton Rouge.”

Susan listens intently, making her way through a mental checklist of questions in what appears to be overcompensation for the past several months of radio silence from the adults in their family. “And you’ve been at Jinae Prep since the start of the school year.”

“Yes ma’am.” Moblit confirms. “Arrived at the Portland Diocese back in April, started substitute teaching around liturgical duties whenever they needed me.”

“He’s always at school.” Reiner chimes in. “Like, when’re they handing the science department over to you?”

Moblit laughs at that, is about to answer Reiner’s question when Susan asks why he was made to move from one end of the country to the other.

“Well.” Moblit exhales. “To be real upfront about it, we had a few parishioners who needed help seeking legal counsel, and they had no clue how to go about it. And I helped them.”

Susan nods slowly. When Moblit is no-nonsense enough to meet her gaze while answering the question, she sees fit to keep going. “Were these lady parishioners?”

Jakob learned years ago to wait until Susan is done talking before trying to take a drink at the table. He isn’t sure why he lets his guard down on this night, and he pays for it by coughing uncontrollably in front of their company.

“You mean they forced you out.”

Moblit chuckles quietly, stares at the peaches still steaming on his plate. “Well after the diocese issued settlements and dismissed the individual in question, they had a bit of shufflin’ round to do. But no regrets. Spent the first twenty-six years of my life only seeing snow on tv, so this has been a bit of a treat for me.”

It’s as pleasant an answer as there can be for such an undesirable situation, and Susan decides that she finds Father Berner the sort of person she can get along with. She wears a terse little smile while ignoring Jakob’s stare, all the while Reiner plays naive to the subject matter that is currently sailing over top of Jean’s fourteen year old head.

The conversation flows on from there, be it out of curiosity or necessity is anyone’s guess.

“So.” Moblit says brightly, looking at Reiner and Jean. “How’re you two likin’ Jinae Prep?”

Reiner hums, shrugs. “It’s not a _bad_ school, right? But, as my dad likes to say, _Jinae Preparatory Academy is a steroid shot for my future resume._ ”

Susan admonishes her nephew, only to receive an angelic smile for her troubles.

“And you, Jean?” Moblit nudges. “How’re you enjoying school?”

“S”fine.” Jean answers. “Classes are all fine. I like _hours of matins_.”

“Ah! A fine time for contemplation, isn’t it?”

“It is.” Jean agrees before turning toward his mother. “May I be excused now?”

Both Susan and Jakob call out Jean’s name in unison.

“We have a _guest_. Some manners, please?”

“But why?” Jean blinks. “S’just Moblit.”

“ _Father,_ dear.”

“Father Moblit.”

“How about you clear _Father_ _Berner’s_ plate, then you can start on dishes?” 

“Can I call you Berninator?”

“Yes, Mr. Braun, you absolutely can.”

“Reiner.” Susan says in a crisp whisper. “Help Jeanbo with dishes?”

Everything moves rather quickly after that, once everyone begins pushing away from the table.

Jean has somehow managed to grab every single plate in one go, has already started running dishwater by the time Reiner can catch up to him.

Barely a second passes between the moment Jean hollers at Reiner from the kitchen, and Jakob asking Moblit what it was he’d like to talk about. He thinks little of either voice, is simply trying not to drop his armload of glasses and cloth napkins.

Reiner calls back to Jean, asking for a little help, only for the words to die in his throat.

Scanning the room, it’s clear that Jean is nowhere in sight. He hadn’t even managed to turn the faucet off all the way before making his exit, and it’s only due to the sudden chill in the room that Reiner knows Jean must have left through the back door.

Reiner is careful when he turns the water off and lowers the glasses into the sink. Leaning forward, he angles himself to look out the side of the window, doing so just in time to see Jean disappear into the woods.

* * *

Jean doesn’t leave right away.

He stays at school long enough to save face, to try and regain his bearings after his parents withdraw him from the cross country team. Nothing improves, and in fact the situation worsens as Jean continues to lower himself down his proverbial well of seemingly irreversible habits and secrecy.

For each attempt Moblit makes to connect with Jean, he is deliberately ignored. Be it calling on the boy to answer in class, or a friendly wave in the corridors, he is vehemently denied.

Nearly two weeks after his visit to their home, Jean stops coming to class altogether.

His seat remains empty throughout physics one day, and then another. On the third day Moblit peeks into the choir room he knows Jean to frequent at certain hours, only to realize that Jean truly isn’t there.

Oaths and sacraments be damned, there had only been one choice Moblit could have made. If he couldn’t bring himself to aid a child believing he’d found his answer in depleting himself of calories by any means necessary, then the ancillary nature of Moblit’s position had become spiritually hollow, and altogether meaningless.

The behavior had been enough to prompt Moblit to action, though it isn’t the part that sticks to the front of his mind.

It’s the fact that Jean had sought repentance not for purging, but for having put himself in a position to fail his teammates, their school, and even his coach that truly haunts Moblit.

In Jean’s eyes, the compensatory nature of his actions had been his atonement to wordless problems for which he’d begged God provide answers.

The first opportunity Moblit spots Reiner moving through the halls, he takes it.

The older boy looks tired, as though he’s on autopilot, though he musters a polite nod nonetheless.

“How are you, Mr. Braun?” Moblit hazards, smile polite and open. “Has your cousin fallen under the weather lately?”

Reiner doesn’t look Moblit in the eye, but shuffles him toward the wall where they can speak out of the way.

“He isn’t here.” Reiner murmurs, eyes darting around to ensure no one unseemly overhears. “My aunt and uncle had him admitted to a treatment center.”

The news is akin to having a lake once thought frozen giving way beneath his feet. The chill is immediate, and for a moment Moblit feels as though there is no way to breathe. He can’t imagine what Jean and his family might be feeling, or what they’re going through.

“I see.” He whispers at last. “I’m so sorry, Reiner. The school didn’t see fit to inform me.”

Reiner shrugs. “He’ll miss Thanksgiving, but I guess that’s fine. They gave him goals and stuff to work at, and if he’s not a dipshit about it, he gets to come home for Christmas.”

Moblit isn’t sure why, but he laughs at Reiner’s statement. It earns a small, if not also pained smile from him.

“I can tell you miss him.”

“I’m _mad_ at him.”

Moblit nods. “Understandable. I’m sure he’s mad at himself, to boot.”

“Yeah.”

“There's no blame to be had, Reiner. I hope that’s understood, too.”

“Yeah, well...” Reiner mutters noncommittally. He looks away from Moblit then, arms crossed over his large chest like he’s looking for his first opportunity to get away.

“Reiner?”

“What.”

“Would I be welcome if I wanted to visit you and your family again sometime soon?”

“My aunt and uncle aren’t mad at you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Moblit chuckles. “Well that’s a relief. But I’d like to stop by.”

* * *

It’s a strange timeline they’re all living in. Two weeks pass by from the time Jean makes his confession, to the moment he hands his cell phone over to the front desk at Coalesce Wellness Center.

It’s another week before Jakob Kirschstein informs the leadership at Jinae Prep that either Keith Shadis goes, or Jean, Reiner, and the backing of Kirschstein & Smith go instead.

Just as Susan and Jakob refrain from sharing this information with Jean, nor is Father Berner made privy to the Kirschsteins’ insistence that any relocation efforts made by the diocese will also be met with a significant loss of support to the school.

Moblit would have understood if he’d been removed from the community. Sent away, laicized, or worse. It would be less difficult finding a new job than it would be mending a quietly broken heart.

But, he knew well enough that most things tend to heal in good time.

Remaining in the good graces of the Kirschstein family had already been more than he could have asked for. And yet Moblit finds himself doing so anyway.

He’s not only given permission to visit Jean during his stay in treatment, but is encouraged to do so.

After their initial meeting, Moblit would not have pegged Susan Kirschstein as a woman moved to tears. It comes as no surprise that when she does weep, it’s tears of anger when she states that no one else from Jinae Prep has so much as asked about the well-being of her son.

“They think he has mono, anyway.” She’d laughed while wiping her face. 

The residential area of Coalesce Wellness Center strikes a respectable balance between feeling like a place for healing and the upstairs floor of a distant relative’s house. It’s a comfortable enough space to move around in, though it will never feel like a place that should be called home.

It’s the first week of December when Moblit comes to see Jean. Enough time has passed that ill sentiments have blown over, while Jean has had the opportunity to work on and dance around various milestones. Or so Moblit’s been told.

Moblit isn’t sure what to expect when he knocks on the door to Jean’s room. When unannounced visitors aren’t a concept in the adolescent wing of the treatment center, the gesture comes off as an empty act of discretion at best.

But, Moblit supposes, even an awkward courtesy is better than no courtesy at all.

What Moblit gets, is that classic, curious-yet-deadpan stare that he’s come to regard as a Jean Kirschstein trademark.

The uncomfortably angular frame of Jean’s body, however, takes him by surprise.

Jean is unphased by the unintentional scrutinization Moblit now gives him. He’s gotten used to the fact that it’s useless hiding here; a place where confrontation twists itself between emotionally violent outbursts and epiphanies he never thought to ask for.

Wearing multiple layers of clothing at once is not allowed, therein forcing Jean to get used to the upended looks he receives from loved ones he’d successfully hidden from for well over a year.

Nor is Jean bothered when the first words out of Moblit’s mouth are to question whether the tube leading from his nose to his stomach is uncomfortable.

Jean merely shrugs, moves out of the doorway so Moblit may enter his room. “The tape keeping it there is worse.”

“I imagine.” Moblit agrees, taking a look around the room while Jean crosses toward his bed. The room is made to accommodate two patients, though the spread of homework and additional reading material across the second bed indicates Jean has the room all to himself.

“Is that a Merton novel in French?” Moblit asks with intrigue.

“My godfather’s a curator.” Jean says, sounding bored and wanting to cut to the point. “He travels a lot, then sends us stuff in boxes without our names on it so we have to figure out who the gifts are for. It’s a first edition, too.”

“Well, at least you have less competition if he’s sending boxes here.”

Apparently even Jean has his limits, and he answers Moblit with little more than a blunt stare.

Fair enough.

“How are you, Mr. Kirschstein?”

“How do you _think_ I am?”

“I won’t presume to know.” Moblit shakes his head. “But if I haven’t completely lost your trust, I’m always listening.”

“Shouldn’t you be at Vespers right now? Your time’d be better spent there, anyway.”

“There's already enough people thinkin’ they know better than I do about how I ought to live my life.” Moblit snips. “I know perfectly well the best use of my time.”

The tone is stronger than Moblit intends, certainly firmer than he would like. But it also breaches Jean’s facade.

“I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t fuss over it.” Moblit just shakes his head, runs his fingers through his hair until it falls in his face. “So ya’ll like Vespers, then?”

“It’s alright.”

“Would you like to say Vespers with me?”

“Not really. I prefer rosaries.”

“Sure.”

“We can say one.” Jean offers. Reaching beneath his pillow, he pulls out a mahogany rosary, new enough that its beads are still hanging onto their luster.

“Very good, Mr. Kirschstein.”

Kneeling on either side of the bed, their voices weave through the Apostles’ Creed before joining in tandem for the Hail Mary. Ten decades of contemplation where each of them is able to openly divulge his heart while keeping the details between himself and God.

Admittedly, Jean is still angry. There is very little he wishes to say to Moblit Berner. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t find comfort in having him near.


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’d been enough to keep Jean in place a little bit longer, leaning into Marco, savoring the way workshed-strong muscles draped across his shoulders, ensconcing him to the point that sometimes Jean felt protected even from himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! I just wanted to take a second to say thank you to everyone who has left such lovely and wonderful comments throughout the chapters of this story. It's been such a treasure to hear from all of you, and I cannot thank you enough for engaging with me and this story.
> 
> I hope this new chapter finds you well, and that you enjoy reading it. <3
> 
>  **CW** : Continued mention of eating disorders, and stressful family situations.

**December, Still Fourteen Years Earlier**

Every December, Susan Kirschstein takes a leave of absence from her role as executive administrator at Kirschstein and Smith, and she doesn’t come back until the second week of the new year.

For the whole of December, Susan makes good on predetermined plans, an agenda she spends the first eleven months mapping and tweaking. Taking what’s worked in previous years and discarding anything with the potential to make her feel like a mess, she hands the everyday minutiae to a contracted assistant, ensuring the girl is handsomely compensated for the dubious workload.

After that, Susan spends the entirety of December executing what she resolves to make the most wonderful time of the year.

Work parties and parish functions abound; secular and faith-based gatherings where ugly sweaters dominate and attitudes had damn sure be checked at the door. She’s given up the reins to children’s parties as Jean and Reiner have gotten older, has chosen to refocus that energy toward broadening already massive projects.

The String Quartet Dinner is by far her favorite endeavor. An evening of music and fine food donated by the musical and culinary talents of the greater Portland area, seating two hundred guests and starting at five hundred dollars a plate. The proceeds help to ensure that despite the reputation Maine has for its harsh winters, that no resident should have to worry whether or not their utilities will stay on.

A far-flung event right from the beginning, it’d been Susan’s connections and charming, if not also aggressive persistence that had kept the fundraiser coming back year after year, growing to include a sister charity for the giving of blankets and winter wear any place they were known to be needed. 

Susan’s longest running project, however, is the quarterly food collection put on by the whole of Legacy Pines, for which she doesn’t mind being That Neighbor. It’s allowed her to bolster a friendly sense of competition among residents, therein ensuring that every winter the subdivision manages to outdo itself, always bringing in more pounds of food and household essentials than the rest of the year’s hauls combined.

By the time December 23rd rolls around, Susan is typically ready to be done. After several weeks of playing what Jean likes to refer to as Hostess with the Mostest, she offers nothing less than her own home to put on the Kirschstein Family Christmas Party.

One hundred and fifty invitations are sent out for the party, going toward family and friends, employees and parishioners from St. Cecilia’s of Jinae, as well as various names and faces associated with Kirschstein & Smith Contracting.

Almost the entire first floor of their home is made available to their guests; the house broken up into areas to sit and chat, to partake in any number of games, or even take a stroll to an outdoor tent where guests can indulge in whiskey and cigars.

A clamorous occasion, the older Jean and Reiner become the more difficult it becomes to hide themselves away. For the most part they’re free to come and go as they please; so long as they remain polite while rubbing elbows with near strangers who insist they’ve been watching these boys grow bigger every single year.

Jean is almost certain this is his mother’s way of teaching them how to navigate the differences between small talk and idle chatter. How to discern good natured banter from the low key gossip that she unabashedly hates.

It all passes by soon enough. This year, the focus is less on the boys putting their best foot forward, and simply being grateful to have Jean back home where he’s supposed to be.

He tries to pay no mind to the fact that the size of this season’s party has been cut in half, or how even with his grandparents visiting that the atmosphere feels slightly forced.

Most of the time, it’s Christmas morning everyone looks forward to. Sleeping in after Midnight Mass, the quiet opening of gifts, the lazy afternoon of intermittent cleanup, chatter, and movies among family.

Susan’s parents have been gone for years now, having passed away when Jean was barely old enough to remember how much they loved all over him. Jakob’s parents do what they can to compensate, causing the obligatory fuss over their grandson, finding new and interesting ways to embarrass him while respecting Jakob’s finger across-the-throat movement to leave girls out of it.

As is tradition, they give the same treatment to Reiner.

Allan and Betty Kirschstien show not an ounce of pity for the boy who they refer to as a fine young man. They’ve been known to discreetly leave birthday and holiday cards with Jakob on his nephew’s behalf, reinforcing their affections all the more after Reiner had been told years ago to please hurry out to the car, as he was waiting on grandparents that, “weren’t his, anyway.”

And some years, even Reiner’s actual parents manage to make it to Christmas.

At seventeen years old, Reiner isn’t sure whether or not he prefers them there anymore. He begrudges himself less and less that he sometimes hopes their flight will be delayed. He isn’t too hard on himself when he wonders if perhaps an emergency will come up, forcing his father to remain overseas the way it has so many other Christmasses before.

Alas. There is no such luck for Reiner this year. No blessing in disguise by which he might stave off difficult conversations he’s so tired of trying to have, only to be shut down time and again.

Ironically, it’s Dave Braun himself who instigates the discussion this time, standing indignant and clueless in the threshold of his in-law’s family room.

“What do you mean he’s already applied?”

“I mean,” Helen Braun exhales slowly, “He’s already applied to several schools right here in state.”

“Why? What’s the point?” Dave asks, distracted as he cranes his neck into the hallway in search of his son. “We agreed he could stay here through secondary, and for college he’d study abroad. Get some culture into him. That, and he’s only a junior.”

“He’s a junior with a 4.2 GPA, extracurriculars, and ideas about what he wants to try and do with his life.”

“Well he didn’t tell _me_ about it.”

“He tried!” She says through grit teeth. “He’s _been_ trying! You’re short with him on the phone. _Critical_. And I guess you’re no longer checking your email.”

Dave is only half listening, cracks open the frosted French doors once again and hollers for his son while muttering he’s got no time for personal email. “Rei-ner!”

“Shh! This isn’t our house!”

The residents of 62 Namhtom Lane have been busy lately. Rearranging and altering plans, enacting lifestyle changes, all while trying to keep up with the rest of the world that has no intention of stopping for any of them. Whether Dave realizes it or not, he’s becoming less and less a part of his son’s real world all the time.

And as it turns out, Reiner has exactly zero fucks left to give. They’ve been busy here, and he’s got little desire for other people’s problems. Especially ones that he’s already made an effort to try and solve.

Reiner waits for his father to retreat back inside the family room, holds off until the door clicks shut to make himself known. He takes a deep breath before reopening the ornate French door and popping his head inside, finally sliding into the room so he stands between his parents and the rest of his life on the other side.

“Yeah?”

“What’s this I hear about you already applying to schools?” Dave exhales impatiently. “We haven’t discussed any of this.”

“I told you when I saw you in Ecuador what I wanted to do.” Reiner explains, his words measured and slow. “Back in August.”

“Well can you hold off? Hold off so we can compare local options against--”

“Too late. I submitted them back in November.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

“I tried telling you before anyone else.”

Dave doesn’t so much as blink at the comment, ignoring the implication behind Reiner’s words. “So who gave you the go-ahead? _Jake?_ ”

“Mom did.”

Dave side-eyes his wife, decides that’ll have to be a conversation for another time. “Really now? I’m shocked you didn’t just ask Jake and Susan.”

“That’s not fair, Dave.”

“ _Life_ isn’t fair, Helen!” He counters angrily. “Is it fair that we only see our son maybe ten weeks out of the year, just so he can have a normal childhood? You don’t see me complaining! We deal with it!”

“You’ve been offered jobs here at home, and every single time you refuse!” Reiner counters. “You have a tether to Maine-Maria Health, and every time they offer to bring you home you brag about declining them. _Why?_ ”

It’s a question Helen has heard the answers to more times than she can remember. How unique a blessing their situation is to have not one, but two doctors in the family, and that they have an obligation to serve those who have less than them. Cookie cutter responses from a man whose actions increasingly cease to reflect his already shallow, generic words.

Not content to merely let it go, Helen cites the cancelled calls home, the video chats her husband either chooses to overtake with shoptalk, or skip out on altogether.

“That is _your_ choice, but somehow it’s never your fault!” Reiner spits. “Whose fault is it that I remember you trying to slip Uncle Jake money for his _troubles_ , then picking a fight when he refused and you felt awkward over it? So don’t you _dare_ bring them into this!”

“You were eight, Reiner! You have no idea what that conversation was about!”

Helen tries to intervene. She sees the defensive nature of her son’s posture, and as much as it pains her to admit, understands that this is Reiner’s home. Not the perpetually still house a fifteen minute drive away. She’s watched over the years as Reiner’s more important possessions made their way from the house in town, to the bedroom he’s now retreated to for so many years.

“Dave.” She lays a placating hand on her husband’s forearm. “This isn’t the place for it. Reiner can come back with us tonight if he wants, or we can--”

It’s enough to get Dave’s attention, to turn down his volume, though it does little to dilute his words. “No. We don’t have to negotiate on this. Reiner’ll come with us, because that’s where he belongs.”

“How is it that easy?” Reiner demands. “What’re we even going to do?”

Years now, he’s tried to justify his parents’ lifestyle, amplifying the narrative that they’re justified being immersed in the healthcare work they happen to love.

But for so long, that sentiment has been waning, and the less Reiner communicates with them the more meaningless that work becomes to him. It hadn’t been a feeling of jealousy, but a jolt of clarity when Jean’s illness had come to light and Jakob had immediately relegated his schedule and work priorities, going so far as to opt out of a new contract without so much as a second thought.

Dave can only shake his head, narrows his eyes in annoyance at his son’s questions. “What do you mean, _what’re we going to do_? Your mother and I have to leave again day after tomorrow, and we have to get this school stuff under control!”

“Is that all?” Reiner muses. “We can do that with an email!”

“Fine! You want me to own up? I’ll take the blame for letting this go on for too long. That’s on me, because I could’ve made you come with us. You could’ve had a private tutor and been with us the whole time. Could’ve done boarding school and gotten the benefit of sports and whatnot without the shitshow. So there you go, Reiner. It’s all on me!”

Reiner scoffs. “Same bullshit, different continent.”

“Mom,” Reiner appeals to Helen, his words gentle and entirely unlike the way he speaks to his father. Privately, Reiner doesn’t ignore that she is part of the problem. Just as culpable for her inability to put her foot down, Reiner also realizes his mother is not a woman who excels at making difficult choices well. “I _am_ home.”

Dave mocks his son’s plea, accusing him of being overdramatic for the sake of it. No longer yelling, his arguments have been reduced to embers muttered under his tongue—barely audible, but still hot enough to burn the house down. He only stops his babbling when he notices they’re no longer alone.

A young face is peering through the double doors, its presence alone enough to force Dave to stand up straight and change his tone. “Whatcha need, Jeanbo?”

Walking right past Dave, Jean ignores his uncle in favor of hugging his aunt, all without ever breaking Reiner’s stare. “I got Levi’s old Atari set up. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Yeah.” Reiner nods. “I’ll be up soon. Just… start without me.”

“I’ll wait.” Jean says firmly, hugging his aunt once more while offering her a placid smile. Striding toward the exit, Jean stops short until he’s toe-to-toe with his uncle, gazes up at the man who’s never really cared for hiding his tactless opinions about the world, or any certain person within it.

For Jean, Dave extends just enough propriety to eek by. It’s more than he allots Jean’s father. Perhaps a little more than he’d give to one of his patients. He can give a boy that much.

Jean, however, is interested in none of it.

“I have a question, if that’s okay?”

“Go for it.” Dave sighs, straightening up, trying to figure out if his hands go in his pockets or on his hips as he gives his nephew his attention.

“I know you like being a doctor in developing countries because it’s important.”

“That’s right.”

“And you said you don’t care about pay raises because you’re changing lives.”

Dave trips up for a moment, having no idea when this fourteen year old child had time to overhear the details of such old conversations. Tries not to think about how he’s said those words enough times to have lost track of their meaning.

“Yes?”

“Well.” Jean lilts. “Isn’t it your job to just get people healthy? Or as close as you can get to it?“

“Yes,” Dave reluctantly agrees, “But after that comes a period of--”

“It’s _their_ job to change their own lives. And while you brag about staying overseas, you’re making a choice that’s changing your own son’s life. You’re replaceable to them, y’know. There’s gonna be more doctors, _plus_ you and Aunt Helen each make enough money that you can say whatever you--”

“ _Oh, will you just shut your mouth already?!_ ”

It’s shock that causes Jean to obey, if only for a brief moment.

“I could hear you this morning.” Jean says softly, meeting his uncle’s eyes. Silently daring him to stare too long at the raw patch of skin where the medical tape refused to give way, or to yell at him one more time.

Jean has only been discharged for a few days now, has been diligently going through the motions of recovery. Making an effort at leaning on those closest to him when he’s forced to admit he doesn’t know if he can do this alone, or if he wants to do it at all.

“When you were whispering about how my mom and dad can’t even take care of the one they’ve got, so it was a good thing they couldn’t have more? And that Reiner’s lucky he’s got Braun genes to make sure his head is screwed on tight while he stays with us? I heard all of that.”

Reiner looks to his father, unable to hide the hurt in his eyes. He looks to Jean next, not knowing what other terrible things he’s heard, where he’ll choose to stop, or if he even wants to hear it.

For all the honesty Jean was learning to show through therapy, a dam had also broken there. An emotional vulnerability he was so afraid of that he’d take collateral from his speaking partner, just in case the subject matter became too heavy for him to bear alone.

Jean doesn’t wait for his uncle to answer. He flashes a look toward his Aunt Helen, instead, who regardless of her motivation they both know didn’t dispute her husband’s outrageous claims about her sister’s little family.

“It’s always your way, or nothing at all.” Jean lilts now, his voice a phantom of what it’d previously been. “But if you keep doing that, all you’ll have left is nothing, because _no one_ likes to--”

The door to the family room opens once again, and this time it’s Jakob and Susan who step inside.

“That’s enough, Jeanbo.” Jakob says, wrapping an arm around his son while leading him toward the door. It’s one of those candid moments that’s left Jean without his defenses up, that for reasons known only to him, he chooses to reconcile with, as opposed to starting a fight.

Walking together, their eyes meet and it’s clear as day that Jean is the spitting image of his father; Jakob glancing with concern toward Jean, who in meeting his father’s gaze has his face angled toward the sky.

From their stature, to that same angular jaw. Where Jean had inherited his mother’s fair skin, that sandy blonde hair and her bronzed hazel eyes and her fire, he’d taken his father’s frame, his mannerisms and that sharp, yet easy demeanor.

Jean nods to Jakob, bitterly mutters something about it being time for the grownups to talk for a while, only to find himself being led out of the room and up the staircase. He’s halfway to the landing when he turns around, his voice echoing throughout the foyer for the entire house to hear.

“It doesn’t matter! I already know what he thinks about _all_ of us! The walls have ears, Uncle Dave!”

Where Jean fully expects to be yelled at by this point, he finds the French doors being slammed closed, instead. Listening momentarily, hearing another set of footsteps standing awkwardly outside the door, he hears Reiner’s heavy sigh and decides to pad backward up the plush carpeted steps.

* * *

Several minutes transpire where Jean finds himself alone in his room, flipping through dozens of hard plastic game cartridges. Some bought new, most of them used like the system itself. But all of them kept in perfect shape since the day they became Levi’s.

Levi Ackerman.

Lifelong best friend to Susan, one half of Jean’s godparents, and husband-to-be-just-waiting-on-the-fucking-goverment to Erwin Smith.

In some ways, Jean had always been Levi’s kid. While their upbringings were as different as night and day, the two of them shared a sharp intensity that could only be buffered by the people they loved.

As his mother, Susan was both to be adhered to and protected at all costs. Both tasks Jean couldn’t help but feel like he’d begun to fail at lately, unaware that his family’s typically glossed over lives had as much to do with working hard at relationships as it did shielding Jean and Reiner from any terse or painful times whenever possible.

And then there was Jakob. A man who in Jean’s eyes was seemingly larger than life. An unattainable goal who may look something like an aged up version of the boy himself, but who was infinitely more put together than Jean could ever hope to be. His worst nightmares had less to do with death or being caught purging or crying, and everything to do with letting Jakob down.

In some ways, Jean believed his parents were naive. Unable to see anything other than love in their eyes when looking at him, Jean was certain it’d been misplaced and would fade with time.

Levi’s gaze hit different.

There was love there, to be sure, but there was also an undercurrent to his godfather’s grey-blue eyes, that suggested he’d been there before. Wherever or whatever _there_ was, Jean didn’t exactly know. But he trusted it.

Levi had brought his old gaming console over earlier in the week, had mazel tov’ed Jean for coming back home, then shown both boys how to beat Erwin and Jakob in all things Atari.

Jean grins at the memory, doesn’t forget Susan telling him about how Levi had been so full of pride, how he’d given a genuine smile upon earning enough money to buy himself the console. They’d been sixteen at the time, and Levi had gotten permission to leave the game at Susan’s house, lest his Uncle Kenny find it and sell it for what Levi simply called _his money_.

Jean’s reverie is broken when Reiner slips into the room, hastily shutting the door behind him. “Merry Christmas!”

“Sorry.” Jean’s eyes drag up toward his cousin as he makes an attempt at reconciliation, though he barely achieves more than a whisper.

“Why?” Reiner grunts, avoiding eye contact by browsing through the games. “You didn’t make him an insufferable asshole. That’s his own fault.”

“I could’ve kept my mouth shut.”

“Um, no? No you couldn’t have!”

Jean is offended for little more than a second before he can’t help but laugh. Reiner is soon to follow, reaffirming that Jean’s loud mouth will one day be the end of him. At least Reiner will still love him, even if he manages to take a few others down with him.

In the end, they settle in and close out Christmas day indulging in the likes of Asteroids, Pac Man, and Donkey Kong. Both wearing oversized headphones, they each say very little while neither boy admits to there being no sound coming through the speakers.

Half an hour transpires, the minutes filling up with the raucous arguing of their parents, and the crying of adult-sized tears while Helen argues with her husband that if Reiner wants to stay, then he stays.

Neither of them acknowledges the way the slamming of the front door causes both of them to jump, the assumption of silent tears as they hear Susan’s placating tone promising that she’s got it under control, that there isn’t anything for Helen to worry about.

Elsewhere in the house, the telltale squeak of a certain hinge tells the boys that the door to Jakob’s study has opened, then immediately come to a succinct close. There’s hardly time to think of it, as immediately after comes a knock at the bedroom door.

Reiner sighs at the sound of his mother’s voice, while Jean looks away out of propriety. He doesn’t have to like his aunt very much these days, but nor does he need to rub that into Reiner’s face.

He simply pauses their game, and waits. Takes to the absent-minded comfort of tracing the angle of his protruding hip bone, tries not to listen to the sound of Reiner assuaging his mother’s apologies.

It’s well after midnight when Jakob sneaks into the bedroom several hours later, picking up snack wrappers, stepping around limbs while covering the boys with blankets and attempting to turn off screens.

It isn’t too much of a surprise when Jean’s head pops up in the dark. Jakob simply throws a second blanket on top of him, tells his son to go back to bed.

“I’m sorry for making things worse.” Jean whispers.

“You didn’t make anything worse, Jean.” He promises. “I have four plates here, kid. How many were yours?”

“One.”

“One.”

“It was all brownies and tasty holiday shit.”

Jakob can only sigh at that. “Don’t curse, and don’t tell your mother I just cleaned up after the two of you.”

“ ‘kay.”

Jean accepts it when his dad ruffles his hair, won’t ever be too old to secretly appreciate that show of affection. He waits until Jakob gets to the bedroom door before piping up with what he’s really been wanting to say.

“I kept everything down.” Jean calls out. “I finished all of it, too.”

If the hallway light happens to reflect the tears pooling in Jakob Kirschstein’s eyes, he’d be the last to deny it. He’s always been that kind of guy.

“Good job, Jean. I bet you can pull it off again tomorrow, too.”

Jean doesn’t answer at first. Just rolls himself up in his blankets, hands sliding habitually beneath his pillow. “Okay.”

And that is how they begin the Christmas season.

A group of broken people doing their best with themselves and one another, offering up their hearts and promising the only thing they can in showing up for each new day.

* * *

* * *

**Present Day - July**

There is a room just off the kitchen of the old farmhouse, where muddy work boots and laundry machines live, where rain slickers and work jackets adorn brass coat hooks that came with the house. There’s a poster of planting zones and plant species taped to an otherwise bare wall, the rest of which is taken up by sprawling, uncurtained windows overlooking part of the three acres belonging to them.

It’s also the room where Marco and Reiner made their initial attempt at nurturing plants and crops. Where some seedlings took root that first winter, while for one reason or another the others withered and died.

Several months later, the hardier seedlings have spent the summer nestled and thriving in their garden beds, and the laundry room is currently the testing site for multiple crops they’re trying to grow right from their scraps.

It’s a Thursday afternoon much like any other when Reiner pulls Jean into the laundry room, volunteering him to mark off various boxes on a spreadsheet full of their most recent specimens. Denoting how old they are, the care they’ve been given and the nutrients they’ve received.

Jean can’t help but grin at the paper, which he’d been handed somewhat ceremoniously, while Reiner insisted this entire setup was merely _to see what happens._

There’s no denying that the dirt-smudged fingerprints in the margins belong neither to Jean nor Reiner. He’d like to think by this point that he’s learned the shape and planes of Marco’s hands well enough to eliminate him as the potential smudger.

But Jean keeps quiet. He humors Reiner’s bashfulness, does his best not to tease his burgeoning relationship with Bertholt Hoover. Instead of asking Reiner whether he’s sung to his plants yet today, Jean keeps his eyes on the spreadsheet and calls off germination dates and soil types without provocation.

But there _is_ a tradeoff. Reiner had known well enough that in asking for help he’d end up having to listen to whatever minutiae is currently taking up the front of Jean’s churning mind. And on this day Jean spares nothing.

“It’s not like that.”

“It’s not?”

“No.” Jean pauses, his brows knit in thought. “It isn’t a religious thing. Though I have very specific thoughts on that. But we don’t have time for it.”

“No one outside of an overpriced classroom has time for it.”

“And yet here you are getting all of it for free.” Jean smiles obnoxiously, enjoying himself enough to ignore Reiner’s jab while still providing spreadsheet stats he’s being asked for. “But yeah, no. It’s not like that.”

“Alright. Then tell me what it _is_ like.”

It’s the impact of every critical, inquisitive look Jean’s received since he was a teenager. Whispered suppostions from nosy classmates. Curious stares throughout countless hallways, and over-concerned glances from loved ones as he quietly slinks back up the stairs.

Just one wrong word drawing a too-judgemental expression from Marco, and it would easily bring Jean crashing down worse than anything that’s ever come before.

It’s a risk Jean doesn’t know if he’d be able to take.

For all the trust Marco has bestowed in Jean, whether it’s the continual pain of his mother’s death, his myriad mental health diagnoses, or asking for Jean’s accountability--not handing over every last part of himself feels akin to betrayal.

It’s exhausting just thinking about it. Grinding all of his worry into a proverbial dust so fine it could easily obstruct his lungs, and he’d fail to breath. A singular doubt from Marco no different from a cough sending the airborne silt of his worries into his eyes, leaving him blinded and left to wander the world alone.

It’s already rough acknowledging that Reiner had developed a sixth sense for determining where Jean’s head is at any given time. Whether or not Reiner can ever say he understands what Jean is going through, neither has he ever left him to handle anything on his own. He would just as soon oblige a gut feeling and show up on Jean’s doorstep for nothing, than sit by without doing anything at all.

And the truth is, where Jean is concerned Reiner isn’t always wrong. So there’s that.

Unwilling to accept that things are just fine, only to peel the shirt off Jean’s unassuming back and ask him once more whether or not everything is still _just fine_.

All these years later and Reiner still looks at Jean in that way. A gaze that has grown and adjusted alongside Jean’s own personal growth, but for all Reiner has seen will never fully go away.

As for today, Jean doesn’t have the words to articulate all it is he has to say. It isn’t that Jean believes he can hide his own diagnoses from Marco forever. But he’d also like to forgo any impending confrontation or admission for as long as possible.

“M’just not up for it right now.” Jean turns to him. “I just wanna know if you think it’s fair for me to want his affirmation… his _interest_ , but not sleep with him.”

“I’ll tell you right now Marco isn’t going to care.”

“But it doesn’t seem fair? Starting something with him if I don’t have any plans to deliver? At least not right now.”

Reiner’s eyes flick up, hitting Jean with a deadass stare. “ _To deliver?_ Let’s try unpacking _that_ before—“

“Sorry sorry, wrong choice of words.”

“Dude. It’s been so long since anyone here got laid that it should be called House of Blues. Trust me. No one is complaining. You have a lifetime supply of Marco’s affections. And Marco will be fine.”

“Cause I feel guilty.”

Reiner exhales vehemently at that, takes his time responding, rotates a tray of pepper seedlings while he figures out what he wants to say. “When you say _wrong choice of words_ , what you really mean is you don’t know how to talk to him about bulimia.”

Jean hums critically. “Now they’re calling me anorexic with a tendency for binging and purging.”

“How would you know?” Reiner challenges. “You haven’t been to the doctor for it in years.”

“My job requires an annual physical. So I’ve gotcha there.”

“Shut up Jeanbo.” Reiner mutters while getting eye level with a plant. “You wanna know what I think?”

“Not particularly.”

“You don’t wanna give him a ‘before and after’ to gauge you by, and you’ve never stayed with anyone long enough for it to be an issue.”

“I’m sorry? Did I accidentally say yes back there?”

Jean is being difficult, albeit playful. The gravity of his behavior is lost on neither of them, and in the end Jean nods in acknowledgement.

“Twenty was good.That was when I met Colt.”

“Otherwise known as the only guy you ever brought home.”

“He had lunch with me and dad _once_ .” Jean corrects. “Twenty-one was good, too, but at some point no more Colt. Twenty-two was decent. Kinda meh, but it is what it is. And _twenty-three_ was when things got interesting. But the good kind.”

Reiner looks up when Jean stops. He waits. “What? No thoughts on your sexual misadventures _after_ twenty-three? You already peaked or something?”

“They were fine. And then there was nothing at all, which was also fine.”

He recalls being introduced to Marco. How they’d met during a point in time where Jean had little time or inclination when it came to dating.

How after Marco came into his life, any prospects Jean might have had suddenly weren’t very interesting anymore.

“My point,” Jean elaborates, “is that I had a couple of serious guys, and one or two good times in between, and I don’t regret _any_ of it. Not then, not now.”

“That’s how it should be. And now we can stop talking about it.”

Jean goes quiet, seeming to stare through the spreadsheet in his hands. “I only slept with Liam once. Told him I couldn’t do it again, and he repeatedly threw that in my face. And I can’t stop thinking about it.”

It isn’t that Liam is a threat anymore.

At least not literally. The disquiet he’d left Jean with is another story. Fueling Jean’s expertly hidden self-deprecation. The accomplished posture he’d assume when Jean wouldn’t argue in his own defense because he was being fed doubts and lies he already believed.

Fighting himself the entire drive to Liam’s place on his way to breaking with him, because the last straw hadn’t been anything Liam had said, so much as the breaching of Jean’s privacy just seemed to cross a more concrete line in his mind. There was a clean logic to cutting out someone who would steal journals and personal effects simply for being in a position to do so.

Jean could work with that.

It’s a humbling, occasionally disorientating sensation to acknowledge his unquestionable worth as a human being hand-crafted by God himself, only to find credence with the barbs his ex would try to embed in him. Or the eventual realization that Liam wasn’t even clever enough to think of his own insults, but had lifted most of them from Jean’s own written self-accusations.

“Yeah. Well.” Reiner takes back the spreadsheet, tucking it in a folder he keeps behind a few planters. “He was never worth a minute of your time.”

“Is it fair,” Jean enunciates firmly, imploringly, “To not give Marco everything here?”

“Yeah, Jeanbo.” Reiner sighs. “It’s completely fair. If that’s what you need to feel in control, then--”

“I _am_ in control.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You sure this isn’t about more than crazy ex-boyfriend shit?”

“That’s the crux of it.”

“Whatever.” Reiner stands up again, decides to head outside, holding the door open when Jean follows. “But I’m telling you. Whatever you’re hung up on, it’s not gonna push Marco away.”

“I know.”

“Yeah?”

“I said I know.”

“Good. Then find out how you’re gonna deal with it.”

* * *

It’s the cry of multiple sheets of paper that tells Marco which way to go. The steady cadence of rips and crinkles that guide him toward the library, where sure enough he finds Jean and the wastebasket overflowing with the remnants of monogrammed, warm-white sheets of paper that have since become casualties of a one-man war.

Marco doesn’t hover, though he makes himself known. Asking if everything is okay as Jean hums in affirmation while grabbing a fresh piece of stationary and having another go.

Thinking about all he’d heard only hours before, how true to Reiner’s claims, Marco hadn’t a grievance in all the world where Jean was concerned.

Regardless of missing out on most of it, it’s that conversation that had never been meant for him that’s brought Marco in search of Jean, seeking to abate his concerns before the three of them head out for dinner.

Peeking inside the library, Marco observes how tightly Jean grips his pen, lamplight glinting off of the nib, a determination that if Marco isn’t mistaken says that Jean is unwilling to let go.

“Hey.” Marco hums quietly. “Spinners soon.”

“I know.”

Everyone goes through rough spots. Marco knows that. At this point, Marco has no sure way to discern if Jean is in the middle of just one of those days, or if he has a right to be worried about anything more.

Observing Jean and Reiner’s rapport offers little, if any help. Reiner has always been somewhat of a helicopter parent to anyone he loves, and it would be nothing less than out of character if he didn’t nag Jean over his well-being from time to time.

Even so, Marco can’t help but imagine that this isn’t it. He won’t flatter himself into any romantic notions of grandiose connections, or that he _gets_ Jean better than the others. That isn’t to say he’d be wrong in believing so.

“Alright if I sit?”

“Ridiculous thank you notes.” Jean mutters, kicking out the chair beside him. It’s the one Marco took over when Mingus decided he had better places to nap in. “Got the template, have the message. I just can’t get it to _look_ right.”

“I thought one of the perks of fountain pens was that they lay in your hand naturally?”

“Provided the asshole wielding it allows it to. Then sure.”

Jean's about to toss another piece of stationary in the trash, only to find Marco intercepting it along the way. Unraveling the note, Marco smooths it across his palm to reveal what could only be referred to as a gentleman’s scrawl.

Well practiced handwriting cascaded across the note, the width of each letter decrying an impatient and heavy pen stroke Marco assumed wasn’t Jean’s norm. He can’t help but wonder the difference between this piece of stationary and the rest, imagines Jean could tell him all about it.

Had he no idea how introspection and insecurities work, Marco would be inclined to ask Jean what the problem is.

As it is, Marco takes to his knees, trading the ruined thank you note for the comfort of Jean’s hands. Cold but receptive, for as long as Marco’s been privy to hold him, he’s made a hobby of doing what he can to warm Jean’s perpetually frigid hands.

“Hey. Don’t be upset? Or if you need that, then go for it, but--”

“What is it, Marco?”

“So… You know how this house is over a hundred years old.”

“When you factor in the individual age of various materials, even older.”

“Totally. Like those ornate heating vents big enough Reiner could legit crawl through...”

Just like that, the teasing sound of Reiner’s voice floats through Jean’s head. Fourteen years of arbitrarily being reminded that _walls have ears, Jeanbo!_

“Ope.”

“Yeah.” Marco smiles, cheeks warm with embarrassment while still rubbing those frigid hands between his own, his words are firm. “Jean. I’m here for this.”

“I know.” Jean leans forward, bumping their foreheads together and raising a brow. “I can feel you right here beside me.”

While Jean is playful and sarcastic for him, Marco is unsure whether or not it puts him at ease. He learned a long time ago that Jean tries to defuse his moods with sardonic, occasionally confounding answers, and that he’s found a certain delight in the fact that Marco can keep up with him.

“What I’m trying to say, is that I may have overheard a scrid of conversation between you and Reiner earlier.”

Immediately, tension spreads through Jean’s shoulders, his voice hurried as Marco tries to rein in his concerns. “ _When?_ ”

Marco attempts to calm Jean’s nerves with a slow, indulgent kiss. He’s successful in his endeavor, leans in for a second kiss before sitting back on his heels.

“Earlier?” He smiles, hazards to remove the pen that until now has remained pressed between Jean’s fingers, lacing them together with his own. “I didn’t catch much of it. This house is older than all three of us combined. The vents carry sound alright, but plaster walls aren’t exactly made of tissue paper.”

“The vents have ears…”

Marco hums affectionately, rakes a hand through the back of Jean’s hair while trying not to let the nature of the conversation get away from them. “You’re deflecting again.”

“I’m just…” Jean shoves his glasses into his hair with one hand before letting it retreat atop of a broader, freckled hand still hanging onto his own. “I’m sorting some shit out. But I _promise_ it’s got nothing to do with us, Marco. I want this.”

It’s anyone’s guess as to where all of this started.

For Marco, it was probably a mouthful of petulant words and a lilting tone across a computer screen. Learning that for the lethality of Jean’s bite, so too was he able to indiscriminately comfort and soothe. Jean was a self-made mosaic whose personal truths came together to make every facet of himself that much brighter.

In Jean’s case, there had been a fascination for the man who Reiner had spent so many years living with, who somehow Jean had gone without hearing so much as a single word from. In the end Jean had teasingly decided that Reiner had deliberately hidden Marco from him.

It hadn’t mattered at all to Jean that they’d met at a distance. There was no time for worry where Marco was concerned, as their friendship had fallen into place quickly and so very neatly as if it’d been there all along. It hadn’t taken long for Jean’s heart to go from _need to find me a guy like that,_ only to end up at _what’s the point if it isn’t him?_

Their first kiss had been a long time coming, had caught them both by surprise during what was otherwise just another Thursday night among found family and friends.

The slow, indulgent walk through the old gravel parking lot, where fingers had linked not for the first time, and the first brush of their lips that ensured nor would it be the last. A long sought endeavor made good out of an impromptu moment beneath the pale glow of a buzzing streetlight.

Jean had been eager, leaning in when Marco had tried to pull away. The split-second decision to kiss Jean once more had been enough to assuage his nerves, which Marco sought to assure by kissing him again, and again, and again, the taste of Jean’s lips becoming more of an addiction every single time.

Two months have passed since then.

It wasn’t the novelty of a fresh romance that assured Marco he would never grow tired of this. Rather, it was the way he caught himself thinking about how being with Jean now could grow and differ throughout all their time to come.

“I’ve known Reiner somethin’ like fourteen years.” Marco sighs, thinking aloud. “I’ve known you nearly three.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Why is that?”

“Who knows?” Jean hums, so quiet it could only be heard by someone whose ear now lays intimately close to Jean’s chest. “Life does whatever it does… goes fast, then wicked slow…”

“I just keep thinking that yeah, it goes by fast, but do you even know how many times Reiner’s invited me into those spaces? How many times I told him, _sorry but maybe next time_?”

“You say that like you’ve had nothing going on.”

“Most of the time I didn’t!”

“Yeah? And? No one’s upset with you for it.”

“I am.”

“Well then quit.”

Marco has to laugh at that. “I mean, your parents used to show up for frat events. _Shit_ , that stuff was more than ten years ago... I guess I’ve been to their place a couple times. You just happened to not be there at the time.”

“See?” Jean’s lips quirk into that lopsided grin. “S’not only you. Just wasn’t our time yet, was it?” 

Stillness settles between them after that, the noises of their old house and its human and feline inhabitants overlaying the gentle sound of them breathing in tandem.

“At any rate. You already know all my shit.“ Marco says carefully, watching for signs of tension in Jean’s response, though he gets none. “And whatever it is, Jean? That you’re not able to tell me? You’re fine. And I’m here for it.”

“I know.”

“Do you, though?” Marco asks, pulling Jean’s glasses out of his hair, cleaning them with the hem of his shirt. “Sometimes I wonder if you do.”

“I do.”

“I heard you throwing up the other night.”

“You did?”

At first, when Jean cringes it’s kind of cute. The subtle crack of his voice, the downcast gaze as he starts to overthink.

“It’s fine.” Marco presses both of Jean’s hands between his own, rubbing his palms over chilly skin until he feels some semblance of warmth. “It was late, Reiner was staying with Bert, and I should’ve asked if you needed anything. But I know that defensive posture you get when you don’t wanna be bothered. And I’m sorry for leaving you alone.”

“You don’t have to be.” Jean laughs self-deprecatingly. “It was a one-off. Just a bug or whatever. Really.”

Marco can only stare, then. Wonders without his glasses, just how much of his affection and concern Jean actually sees. If nothing else, he probably can feel it from the tension that’s started to build in the air.

“Jean?”

“What.”

“May I kiss you?”

“You don’t have to ask.”

“I’m asking.”

Taking up a fistful of Marco’s shirt is all the answer Jean offers before laying an unfairly gentle kiss to the side of his mouth. A hand gripping Marco’s knee while the other makes careful work of smoothing out Marco’s shirt makes for a convincing presentation that he’s feeling more put together than he truly is. 

Leaning in, resting his forehead in the crook of Marco’s shoulder, Jean can’t help but shudder. “I don’t wanna pull you into my shit.”

“And yet I can recall at least three separate conversations--two of them before we were together--where you specifically offered to share in mine...”

Jean pauses, huffs with frustration. “I don’t have a single clue what I’m doing, Marco. I really don’t.”

“Does that pertain to us?”

“No.” Jean grins, despite himself. “I complicate just about everything, but I’m all good with us.”

“Yeah?” Marco reclaims Jean’s hand, presses his lips to every last knuckle, accepting the silent invitation to exist in Jean’s space.

“Mhm.”

It’s all Marco can do not to go in for one last indulgence, pulling himself back before taking advantage of Jean’s mood. Denying himself the opportunity to hold tight to eager hips, when he knows perfectly well such proclivities will have to wait for another day.

Jean doesn’t mean to whine at the loss of Marco’s warmth, or the always curious exploration of that increasingly adventurous mouth. And yet Marco hears it, catalogs the sound away for another moment that’ll certainly appear later in the night.

“C’mon.” He rasps, pulling Jean to his feet. “If we go now we’ll beat Reiner to the car and you’ll get the radio.”

* * *

Jean is far too quiet when leaving the restroom, letting the door carefully shut behind him in the middle of an establishment saturated by the sound of chatter and laughter, the clinking of glasses and cutlery, and the volume of several televisions blaring multiple games.

He’d obliged Marco at the table, had sat around chatting for a full half an hour after their food had been cleared, ignoring the suspect length of time just to prove he could do it.

That was before noticing that Marco seemed to be wearing a certain expression, had spent most of the night seemingly looking for an occasion to drop a very particular affection for Jean’s consideration.

It’d been enough to keep Jean in place a little bit longer, leaning into Marco, savoring the way workshed-strong muscles draped across Jean’s shoulders, ensconcing him to the point that sometimes Jean felt protected even from himself.

But for all his personal ruminations, despite acknowledging that love is most certainly in the air, that doesn’t change the fact that Marco had misread the stamina of Jean’s illness. For as confident Jean is in knowing that Marco has his suspicions that something is going on, so too is he secure in his own ability to wait Marco out, knowing for a fact that his eating disorder can operate within a broader window if something throws itself in his way.

It isn’t ideal, but the desired effect is essentially the same.

Now, exiting the washrooms, Jean makes his way across the restaurant, locating a free spot on the old leather sofa beside Eren, and decides it’s as good a place as any to be.

He’s barely had time to adjust in his seat before Eren is assessing him, granting Jean a little more room while turning to better face his acquired company.

“Where’s your bestie?”

Eren’s exasperation is clear as day, and though he understands it isn’t personal, it leaves Jean feeling he hasn’t any reason to mince words.

“He’s in the back teaching Jack billiards.”

“Jack is seven months old.”

“Well either someone starts him off now, or it’s a lifetime of Annie gone undefeated. You seem to know a thing or two about that.”

It seems Marco will always be able to offer Jack something. From the very beginning, he’s been adept at soothing Annie and Armin’s son, had their trust since before Jack was even born, and at twelve weeks old had drawn out Jack’s very first laugh.

How it’s possible for a grown bachelor with no previous experience to look a child in the eye, in such a way that promises he’s being granted a lifetime of respect right out of the gate is beyond Eren. Almost as bewildering to him, is the fact that he is apparently unable to provide the same.

“Seems like I can’t even get an in with her when it comes to Jack. Or anything else, honestly. I don’t know what I did.”

“It isn’t about what you did or didn’t do.” Jean says. “Okay. Judging from _that one time_ , maybe it is. Your being a dick isn’t anything new, but let’s just say you’ve been an angel this whole time.”

Eren is looking at Jean with what appears to be the very last of his patience, hoping against hope he doesn’t take much longer in making his point.

“Anyway.” Jean continues, unphased. “I think it’s a chemistry thing. You _know_ Armin cares about you. He’s been your bud since you guys were kids, right?”

Eren supposes he should just be grateful Jean doesn’t ask how after being lifelong friends that Eren managed to fuck this up. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“Duh. That’s my thing, Yeager, keep up.” Jean cracks the most seminal of smiles, then does Eren the courtesy of meeting his eyes and leveling with him. “It’s just that for this, Marco as a person somehow hits the right note. And also, none of us are exempt from occasionally being an asshole. So try and not feel too bad.”

The best Eren offers is a noise indicating he’s heard everything Jean has said.

He might be Reiner’s family, but it feels more like Marco had brought Jean in. As a newcomer he’d shown deference in regards to Jack, had always acknowledged the baby’s presence while never so much as touching him without being invited, first. It was a move that had garnered Jean serious traction with Annie.

It’d been the way in which Eren conducted himself over his own misgivings with the woman his best friend had fallen in love with that had landed him in this position. And he knew it.

Eren had been the one to introduce Annie to Armin.

An impromptu interview for their college newspaper, he’d brought Armin in for a profile piece on potentially fraudulent spending by a college board member. A topic that had Annie feeling in over her head, she was still hellbent not on simply covering the story, but nailing it in the process.

Armin had obliged Annie her interview, had broken down the nuances of collegiate finances and the ethics that go into its spending. He’d gone so far as to provide Annie with what he believed would be useful outside resources, which in the end would turn Annie’s single story into a series that garnered her a regional award for investigative journalism.

When Armin had asked if she’d like to grab dinner with him and Eren on that first night, both boys had been thrilled that she’d said yes.

It had seemed like a great idea at first.

And for Armin, it was. Having been introduced to his future wife at nineteen by none other than his best friend, married by twenty-five and a father before hitting thirty. It was a series of events so grand Armin would never have thought to ask for any of it, and had certainly not realized he’d been taking anything away from Eren.

But then, what was there to steal when those feelings had only ever been one-sided?

It wasn’t entirely unlike the feelings he’d go on to harbor for Armin’s new work buddy from Dawk & Zackley LLP. Hell, maybe this would end up being his kismet after having once believed Annie could’ve been the one.

Eren had tried so hard to win Marco’s favor. Had studied his demeanor as he solidified friendships first with Armin, then Mikasa, and finally Annie. Bringing with him an exceptionally loud set of friends, that somehow also fit with the quieter, elusive set that belonged to Armin.

Out of everyone, Marco had felt like his common ground. The person able to slip from one group of people and into the next, earnest enough to successfully mesh them all together.

It hadn’t been any one thing that sent Eren’s heart back down the ladder. Time, maybe. Or the way he could go out of his way to treat Marco or try to be there for him, and while Marco always showed reciprocity and gratitude, nor did he ever look at Eren with anything deeper than friendship in his eyes.

He’d been more abrasive with Armin in regards to his pain. Secluding himself from his friend, resorting to side comments and a cold brush-off toward his and Armin’s numerous inside jokes, alongside the canceling of various plans.

It had been a deliberate staging for the quiet disappointment that rose out of his escalating behavior. Frustration for every opportunity Eren was extended an olive branch, only to snap it between insolent hands, stepping on it as he walked away before Mikasa had finally stopped him in his tracks. Being told that love isn’t enough to make people stay, and that if he didn’t get his shit together she would choose Armin without ever having to question her decision.

There was never any doubt that he’d earned their ire, and was appropriately made to earn Armin’s trust back again. It’d been common sense not to ever count on regaining Annie’s.

With Marco, Eren’s feelings had dissipated slowly, leaving his system at a much more gradual, organic pace. It’d made Eren a chore to deal with for the past year or so, as his dying feelings wove throughout other insecurities and pains.

His upset had seeped out in other ways, channeling itself into impromptu fights and his even his art. Eren had never been very good at bottling anything up. Nitpicking and criticisms, never provoked and always uncalled for, he seemed to have enough vitriol to go around for everyone.

By the time Eren had lashed out at Jean, he’d simply taken to provoking the people he cared for the most, counting on just another set of rolled eyes, an under-the-breath declaration of, _that’s just Eren_ , only to find out that this time he was sorely mistaken.

Losing Marco’s goodwill had snuck up on Eren just as suddenly as those affections for his friends had presented themselves all those years ago. As it turned out, Marco’s well-earned angst had been enough not only to properly wound Eren, but to leave him able to see how he might pick up the pieces and start over.

And apparently, he’d become somewhat approachable again.

“ _He doesn’t act like he’s owed anything._ ” Annie had told Eren once, referring to Jean, sneaking up on him while nursing the baby in question. “ _Reiner’s cousin-brother or whatever, Marco’s boy… And you know better than anyone how tough it can be for Armin to open up to new people. But he let Jean in._ ”

“ _Yeah? And?_ ”

“ _And_ _Jean still doesn’t act like he’s owed anything._ ” Annie had leveled with him. “ _He isn’t dismissive, even when he’s got no clue what’s going on, and doesn’t make everything about himself. I like that._ ”

Now, Eren’s mouth twists up thoughtfully. Chewing on several thoughts at once, gives Jean a mild glare.

“I remember when everything used to be so much easier.”

“Easier? Or when someone was there to wipe your ass?”

“Both?” Eren answers, almost unbelievingly to Jean, with a smile. “I suppose I’ve not been the best at listening lately. These past few years.”

“You’re just salty because Armin’s world expanded to be about more than just you. You liked it too much when he depended on you.”

“Did his world expand? Or did mine cave in?”

Jean’s brows knit at that. “That is the most pretentious bullshit I’ve ever heard in my life, dude.”

“Whatever. It’s true.”

Jean can’t help but laugh. “I’ve taught wannabe hipsters with less faux-introspection than that!”

If Jean’s laughter is contagious, if Eren finds himself grinning despite himself, he’ll be the first one to deny it. But he might also admit that it feels pretty damn good to have a laugh. Even if it’s at his own expense.

“I’m an artist, Jean.” He drawls, gazing dramatically at the brunet cascade of hair that falls over the front of one shoulder. “That’s just who I am.”

“Whatever. But hey, that reminds me. There’s something I actually wanna--”

Jean doesn’t get to finish that sentence. Eren’s brows arch skyward in the same moment Jean finds his words drowned out by the inebriated cry of the self-proclaimed matriarch of their circle.

“ _Jean Kirschstein, you get outta here!!_ ”

He’s given very little time to respond before Ymir has taken a seat in Jean’s lap, unceremoniously propping her feet across Eren’s knees.

Unable to help smiling for her, Jean gives a respectable tug to her ponytail while asking how he’s meant to go anywhere like this.

“You’ve got nice legs, Jeanbo.”

“I have what, now?”

“Not for fucking, though!” She giggles.

Eren has the decency to cover his face when he snorts, asking Ymir how long she’s been three sheets to the wind.

She turns to Eren then, soulful brown eyes so serious they could conjure the dead. “Does Marco know you’re talking to his boy?”

It’s everything Eren can do not to roll his eyes when Jean succumbs to a bashful little smile, muttering that he does whatever the fuck he wants. It’s unclear if Ymir’s ensuing laughter is meant as an endearment or to make fun of him.

Ymir just leans forward, cupping Jean’s chin and turning his face toward hers. “Go running with me.”

“Oh.” Jean muses, removing her hand from his face, linking their fingers as she swings their arms outward. “Now it makes sense.”

“I’m serious, Jean! Run a race with me!”

“Right now?”

“Yes! Derry Dash! You and me. Right now!”

“But it’s not until September.”

“Details…”

It’s only a matter of time before Christa catches up with her wife, finding Ymir halfway to dancing with Jean from where they sit on the couch, adamant in her insistence that if Jean quit running then he can start up again.

“Apologies, boys!” Christa declares while extricating Ymir’s feet from Eren’s lap. “Ymir gives herself permission to get sloshed once a quarter. Being the best nurse ever, and race schedules and all. She usually saves it for special occasions.”

Jean nods in understanding, makes no effort to keep Ymir from wrapping her arms around his neck. “Soo, I should take this as a compliment.”

“Absolutely!” Ymir confirms. “Chris! Jeanbo’s running Derry Dash with me.”

“Not tonight he’s not, dollface.”

It’s nothing less than a feat of human strength when Christa hoists all five feet and nine inches of her wife onto her feet. It’s an act of God when she keeps Ymir upright while turning around to wave goodbye, a great big apology mouthed off her cupid bow lips.

It’s nothing short of amusing when Christa extends her full reach to cup Ymir’s cheek, facing her forward and escorting her toward the door.

“Tomorrow is my day off, woman, _let me live!_ ”

“You’re already living the dream, baby!”

The last thing Jean and Eren see of their friends is a finger gesture from Ymir signifying a pair of legs, followed by a motion that says, “call me!”

Eren hums with amusement, then turns his attention back to Jean. “So why don’t you run anymore?”

“How come you didn’t tell anyone you have an opening at an art gallery in Portland?”

“How d’you know about that?”

“I have my sources.”

“ _How?_ ”

“Bulletin board at the college dude, you can’t hide from everybody. Also _are_ you hiding?!”

Eren frowns, retreats into himself. “Let’s just say I didn’t earn it.”

“Whatever.”

“I mean it, Jean.” Eren sits up, his eyes reflecting urgency. “Don’t tell anyone!”

“Chill out, I’m good with secrets.” Jean assures him. “You can quit your damn whining.”

“Thank you.”

“But… you are going to invite someone, right?”

“Armin?”

“Mikasa?”

“ _Eren._ ”

“Yes?”

“You are such an asshole.”

“I’m well aware, thank you.”

“You realize that’s gonna hurt, right? You know that, don’t you?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Eren sighs, falling back into the couch. “This is the first, but there’s going to be other galleries. But right now I don’t deserve to have them there.”

“That’s exciting.” Jean whistles. “That’s some big shit. You didn’t get that by sucking someone’s dick the right way.”

“Jean!”

“I’m just saying! You didn’t get it without merit. Your friends’ll wanna be proud for you.”

“Next time.”

“Whatever.”

“You know something? You swear a lot for being Catholic.”

“Fuck off, Yeager.”

* * *

Bent across a pool table more than halfway across the establishment, Marco watches as his boyfriend gently gives Eren a little piece of hell.

It’s an odd friction that exists between Jean and Eren, though it also lacks aggression. Perhaps for once in his life, Marco thinks, Eren may have found his match.

He’d come so close to confessing to Jean tonight, ultimately not knowing which very important thing he should decide to come out and say, first.

Soon, though.

It won’t be too much longer before Marco properly tells Jean that he’s absolutely wild about him. That he’s in love with him.

And then they can talk about the difficult stuff a little bit later.


End file.
